Chapter 8 - THE THIRD MOTHER
Nobody spoke.
The sea struck the rocks outside.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I stared at George.
“There were three mothers?”
“No.”
He swallowed.
“Two mothers. Three pregnancies had been expected in that private ward that week. Only two women delivered that night.”
“Elena and Evelyn.”
“Yes.”
Victoria’s face emptied.
“My mother gave birth to me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why was I photographed beside Nora?”
“Because Evelyn’s delivery was hidden.”
George sat again.
“Evelyn was unmarried. Her family controlled a fortune and a reputation she was terrified of losing. She planned to place her baby privately.”
Victoria looked sick.
“So she put me beside Elena’s child and pretended Elena had twins?”
“Not exactly.”
George hesitated.
That hesitation told me the worst part was coming.
“Elena did deliver twins.”
I closed my eyes.
Three babies.
Gabriel said quietly, “Then where is the other DeLuca infant?”
George looked at him.
“That is the question Elena spent twenty-eight years trying to answer.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Victoria sat down heavily.
“So Nora is Elena and George’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And Elena had another baby.”
“Yes.”
“And I am Evelyn’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“Who is my father?”
George looked away.
“I truly don’t know.”
Victoria’s voice cracked.
“Wonderful.”
I should have hated her.
Instead, I moved closer.
Not touching.
Just close enough that she wasn’t sitting alone.
She noticed.
Said nothing.
Gabriel reopened Elena’s note.
“Why switch the bands?”
George answered.
“Evelyn panicked after Elena’s second baby was born weak and taken for observation. She saw an opportunity.”
“To do what?”
“Place Victoria under Elena’s name temporarily, then retrieve her through a private transfer without her own family ever knowing she had delivered.”
“But Antonio arrived.”
“Yes.”
“And everything collapsed.”
George nodded.
“When Antonio learned Elena had supposedly delivered two infants, he demanded to know whether both were his. Evelyn invented the different-fathers story.”
I stared.
“The story everyone has believed.”
“Yes.”
“Why involve you?”
“Because Antonio already knew about me. It was believable.”
Gabriel looked furious.
“So Antonio ordered the child believed to be George’s removed.”
“Nora.”
“Yes.”
“And Evelyn arranged Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
“Where was Elena’s actual second child?”
George’s eyes darkened.
“Missing.”
Not dead.
Missing.
The stakes changed instantly.
“Did Elena know?” I asked.
“Not at first.”
“She thought Victoria was hers?”
“For years.”
Victoria covered her mouth.
That explained Elena brushing her hair.
Calling her little star.
Loving her.
Not because she was secretly her biological daughter.
Because Elena believed she was.
The truth was somehow crueler and kinder at once.
“When did Elena learn?” Gabriel asked.
“After Antonio died. She found the original maternity log.”
George pointed to the microfilm.
“Part of it is there.”
Dominic found an old viewer at a public library two towns over.
By afternoon, we were staring at grainy hospital records.
Three infant identification numbers.
One beside NORA.
One beside INFANT E.P.
Evelyn Prescott.
And one beside BABY E.D. #2.
Status:
TRANSFERRED.
No destination.
At 2:13 a.m.
That was the transfer on the nursery card.
Not me.
Elena’s second child.
Gabriel stared at the screen.
“My sister.”
Biological sister.
Missing for twenty-eight years.
Then Dominic enlarged another line.
AUTHORIZED BY: E. PRESCOTT.
Victoria whispered, “My mother.”
I felt betrayal harden again.
Evelyn had signed the transfer.
George shook his head.
“That’s what Elena believed too.”
“You’re defending her again?”
“No. Look closer.”
Dominic magnified the signature.
The E looked wrong.
Then Victoria leaned forward.
“My mother never connected the P like that.”
Everyone looked at her.
“She signs Prescott with a break after the P. Always.”
Gabriel took out an old engagement contract Victoria had signed.
She was right.
The hospital signature was forged.
“So Evelyn didn’t transfer the baby,” I said.
George nodded.
“That is why Elena changed her mind about Evelyn near the end.”
The villain shifted again.
Not innocent.
But perhaps not guilty of the worst thing.
“Then who forged it?” Gabriel asked.
Dominic studied the microfilm.
A staff initials code appeared beside the entry.
S.R.
Samuel Reed.
The man who pushed me.
The man who had worked for Mercer Shipping.
The man who later became my mother’s hospice nurse.
“What did Reed want with a newborn?” I asked.
George went pale.
“He didn’t want the baby.”
“Then what?”
“He wanted leverage.”
Against whom?
The answer arrived before he could say it.
Evelyn herself.
Dominic’s phone rang.
This time it wasn’t mysterious.
One of Gabriel’s security teams had located Evelyn.
She and the retired nurse had gone voluntarily to an assisted-living facility outside Hartford.
The nurse wasn’t hiding from us.
She had taken Evelyn there because Evelyn had collapsed after leaving the mansion.
A heart problem.
Stress.
Fear.
And one more detail.
Evelyn had been asking repeatedly for Victoria.
We drove back to Connecticut.
Victoria sat silently for most of the ride.
Then she spoke to me.
“If she admits she knew about your sister…”
“She may.”
“What do I do?”
It was the first time Victoria had asked me anything without command or contempt.
“I don’t know.”
She nodded.
Fair answer.
At the facility, Evelyn looked smaller.
No diamonds.
No perfect hair.
No social armor.
Victoria stood at the foot of her bed.
“Who am I?”
Evelyn began crying.
“My daughter.”
“Biologically?”
“Yes.”
Victoria’s face folded.
She turned away.
Evelyn looked at me.
“And Nora is Elena’s.”
“Where is Elena’s other baby?”
Her eyes closed.
“I don’t know.”
Gabriel stepped forward.
“You signed the transfer.”
“No.”
“We know.”
Her eyes opened.
“You know?”
“We found the forged signature.”
Relief broke across her face.
Then shame returned.
“I spent twenty-eight years letting Elena believe I had caused it.”
“Why?”
“Because the truth was worse.”
My stomach tightened.
“What truth?”
Evelyn looked at me.
“Samuel Reed took Elena’s second daughter because of me.”
“How?”
“I owed him.”
“For what?”
She looked at Victoria.
“For keeping her father’s identity secret.”
Victoria stepped closer.
“Who was he?”
Evelyn’s lips trembled.
“Antonio DeLuca.”
Gabriel went still.
Victoria shook her head violently.
“No. We already disproved that.”
“No.”
Evelyn cried harder.
“Antonio was your father.”
George had been wrong.
The hospital worker had not lied about Victoria.
Another reversal.
Gabriel backed away from Victoria as if struck.
Half siblings.
Again.
Evelyn reached for her daughter.
Victoria refused her hand.
“You let me almost marry my brother.”
“No!”
Evelyn sobbed.
“I didn’t know about the engagement until years later, and by then—”
“You could have stopped it any day.”
“I was afraid.”
Victoria stared at her.
“So was I.”
That silenced Evelyn.
Then Nora—the nurse from St. Catherine’s, whose name we finally learned was Margaret Hale—entered the room.
She carried the old hospital blanket.
Inside was something hard.
A frame.
A photograph.
Three women stood outside a church nineteen years ago.
Elena.
Rebecca.
And a teenage girl I had never seen.
On the back, Elena had written:
MY DAUGHTERS FINALLY IN THE SAME PLACE.
My heart stopped.
“Who is she?”
Margaret looked at me.
“Her name is Claire.”
Gabriel whispered, “My sister.”
Margaret shook her head.
“No.”
She pointed at the girl.
“Claire is yours, Nora.”
I stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
Margaret’s eyes filled.
“Elena’s missing baby wasn’t your sister.”
May you like
She looked down at the photograph.
“She was your twin.”
