Chapter 3 - The Second Baby
Vincent read the message again.
Rachel’s grandmother knows where the second child went.
Nobody spoke.
Samuel rose from the library chair.
“What is your grandmother’s name?”
“Evelyn Bennett.”
His face changed instantly.
“You’re Evelyn’s granddaughter?”
That frightened me more than anything else had.
“You know her?”
“I knew an Evelyn Hart.”
“Her maiden name was Hart.”
Samuel sat down again as if his legs had failed him.
Vincent noticed.
“What did she do at St. Catherine’s?”
I answered before Samuel could.
“She was a nurse’s aide. She worked nights for years.”
Samuel closed his eyes.
“Then she was there.”
My stomach twisted.
“There for what?”
“The twins.”
Madison stared at him.
“You said Michael was your son.”
“He is.”
“Then who was the other baby?”
Samuel looked toward Vincent.
“I don’t know.”
Vincent’s patience thinned.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I was unconscious in another wing before either child was born.”
“Why?”
Samuel rubbed the old scar above his eyebrow.
“Because somebody hit me with a tire iron behind the hospital.”
Vincent’s expression changed.
Samuel continued.
“I woke the next afternoon. Anthony told me Rose had lost one child and that Michael had survived.”
Madison stepped forward.
“Rose Crane gave birth to Michael?”
Samuel’s silence answered.
Madison shook her head violently.
“No. My grandmother never had another child.”
“She did.”
“My mother would have known.”
“Your mother was nine.”
Madison sat hard in a chair.
The cruelty from the dinner party had vanished.
For the first time, she looked less like Vincent’s polished fiancée and more like a woman discovering that the oldest story in her family was false.
Samuel removed his wooden rosary.
“Rose gave me this the week before the birth.”
Madison stared at it.
A small brass rose had been tied beside the cross.
Her face broke.
“My grandmother had one like that.”
“She had this one.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed.
“And she gave birth to twins?”
Samuel nodded.
“So Michael has a twin.”
“I believed the second child died.”
“But someone wrote that Rachel’s grandmother knew where the child went.”
“Yes.”
Vincent looked at me.
“You need to call her.”
My first instinct was resistance.
“My grandmother is sixty-eight. Her blood pressure—”
“No one is frightening her.”
His tone softened slightly.
“We go carefully.”
Madison stood.
“I’m coming.”
Vincent looked at her.
“No.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“You burned evidence.”
“To stop my mother’s name from being dragged through your family’s mess.”
“Which means you already knew some of it.”
Madison’s jaw tightened.
“Not this.”
Samuel looked at her.
“What did Michael tell you?”
“That Anthony ruined Rose. That he separated her from someone she loved and forced her to give away a baby.”
Samuel laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Michael told you Anthony was his father.”
Madison stared.
“Yes.”
“That’s why you thought this would destroy your mother?”
“Yes.”
Samuel’s face hardened.
“Michael lied to you too.”
For the first time, Madison looked genuinely betrayed.
We left the mansion after midnight.
Vincent insisted two cars accompany us, though my grandmother lived only twenty minutes away in a modest brick duplex.
He rode with me.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “You can stop.”
I looked at him.
“This was never supposed to become yours.”
“It became mine when Madison accused me of stealing.”
His eyes shifted toward me.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
I looked out the window.
“But my grandmother’s name is on a photograph hidden by your father. I’m not walking away.”
Vincent nodded once.
“I figured you’d say that.”
Grandma Evelyn was awake when we arrived.
She usually stayed up late doing crossword puzzles.
When she opened the door and saw Vincent DeLuca, Samuel behind him, Madison farther back, and me standing in the middle, she dropped her pencil.
Not because of Vincent.
Because of Samuel.
“You.”
Samuel’s voice barely carried.
“Hello, Evelyn.”
She stepped backward.
“You promised you’d never come back.”
“I promised Anthony.”
“That promise should have survived him.”
Vincent looked at her.
“Mrs. Bennett, I need to ask about October 14, 1991.”
Her face drained.
Then she saw the hospital photograph in my hand.
She looked at me with heartbreaking disappointment.
“Rachel.”
“What?”
“You should have left that house when I asked you to.”
I stared.
“You told me the job was too demanding.”
“I told you what I could.”
Vincent remained near the doorway, careful not to crowd her.
“My father recorded a message.”
Grandma Evelyn closed her eyes.
“Of course he did.”
“Michael’s birth was mentioned.”
She sat slowly.
“Michael.”
Samuel gripped the back of a chair.
“Was there another baby?”
Grandma looked at him.
“Yes.”
The room seemed to shrink.
“Alive?” Samuel asked.
Grandma nodded.
Samuel nearly collapsed.
Madison covered her mouth.
Vincent asked the question none of us wanted to ask.
“What happened to the second child?”
Grandma Evelyn stood and walked into her bedroom.
When she returned, she carried an old blue baby blanket.
The fabric was thin with age.
Embroidered in one corner were two tiny letters.
R.C.
Rose Crane.
Then Grandma placed a small hospital identification tag on the table.
The print had nearly faded.
INFANT B — CRANE
Samuel sat down.
“My God.”
Grandma looked at me.
“There were two boys.”
“Where did the second one go?”
She hesitated.
“Anthony carried him out.”
Vincent stared.
“My father?”
“He said it was the only way to keep the baby alive.”
“Alive from whom?”
Grandma’s eyes moved to Samuel.
“From your father.”
Samuel froze.
“Our father had been dead for four years.”
“No,” Grandma said.
“He hadn’t.”
Samuel’s face went blank.
Vincent leaned forward.
“You’re saying my grandfather was alive in 1991?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he want a newborn harmed?”
Grandma rubbed her hands together.
“Because Rose Crane wasn’t supposed to have Samuel’s children.”
Madison frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Rose wasn’t who everyone thought she was.”
Grandma went to an old cabinet.
From the back, she pulled a photograph.
A teenage Rose stood beside Vincent’s grandfather.
On the back:
Rose DeLuca Crane — 1972.
Vincent read it twice.
“DeLuca?”
Grandma nodded.
“Rose was adopted out as an infant. She didn’t learn until she was twenty-three that she and Samuel shared blood through the DeLuca family.”
Samuel staggered backward.
“No.”
“It wasn’t close blood,” Grandma said quickly. “Different branches. But your father cared about appearances, inheritance and control.”
Samuel sank into the chair.
“So he tried to erase my sons.”
“One of them.”
“Which one?”
“That’s the part Anthony never told me.”
Vincent leaned closer.
“You said he took Infant B.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wrote that you knew where he went.”
“I didn’t write that.”
I looked at the photograph.
“Then who did?”
Grandma examined the handwriting.
Her face changed.
“That’s not Anthony’s handwriting.”
Samuel looked over her shoulder.
“Then whose?”
Grandma reached into the pocket of her robe and removed an old fountain pen.
She placed it beside the photograph.
Carved into its silver clip were the initials M.D.
Vincent frowned.
“Who is M.D.?”
Grandma looked directly at him.
“Your mother.”
Vincent’s mother had been Elena DeLuca.
Not M.D.
He said so.
Grandma shook her head.
“No, Vincent.”
Then she delivered the sentence that seemed to stop his heart.
“Elena was the name they gave her after she married Anthony.”
She turned the pen over.
Beneath the initials was a full name.
MARIA DELUCA.
Vincent whispered, “My mother was born a DeLuca?”
Grandma shook her head again.
“That isn’t the worst part.”
She pointed at the photograph of Rose.
May you like
“Maria and Rose were sisters.”
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