Chapter 10 - The Woman Raising My Son
Her name now was Anna Brooks.
She lived three hours north.
Not hidden in a mansion.
Not inside some sinister laboratory.
A small farmhouse.
We did not race there blindly.
After everything, I refused to drag my children into another unknown situation.
Attorneys became involved.
Independent law enforcement was notified where appropriate.
Medical records were preserved.
Then Julian, Rachel, Evelyn, and I went.
A woman opened the farmhouse door.
Sixty-four.
Gray hair.
Rachel’s eyes.
Rachel whispered:
“Mom?”
Diane collapsed.
They embraced.
I stood there feeling like an intruder until a boy appeared behind her.
Six years old.
Dark hair.
Red crescent beneath his collar.
Samuel.
My son.
My knees failed.
I dropped onto the porch.
He stared at me.
“Who are you?”
That was the cruelest sentence of my life.
Diane had told Samuel his biological parents were alive but unsafe.
She never told him we were dead.
That part of Rachel’s information had been wrong.
Why keep him?
Because Diane rescued him from Eleanor when he was three months old.
Evelyn helped arrange it.
There was the missing piece.
Evelyn did not leave Samuel entirely under Eleanor’s control.
She helped Diane take him.
Then kept his location secret even from me.
“Why?”
Diane answered:
“Because Eleanor was watching you.”
If I suddenly regained a child I supposedly miscarried, questions would explode.
Eleanor would know who helped.
Diane believed the safest course was to keep Samuel hidden until Susan’s records could destroy the trust.
Then Susan died.
Everything stalled.
Years passed.
The secrecy became its own prison.
I stared at Evelyn.
“You could have told me eventually.”
“Yes.”
No defense.
At least she stopped making one.
Samuel watched us.
Then Julian knelt several feet away.
“Hi.”
Samuel looked at him.
Diane had photographs.
He recognized us.
“You’re Julian.”
Not Dad.
That hurt Julian.
But he accepted it.
“Yeah.”
“Are you my father?”
Julian’s voice broke.
“I think so. We’ll do proper tests.”
Good.
Truth first.
Samuel looked at me.
“And you?”
I cried.
“I’m Claire.”
He waited.
I didn’t force “Mom.”
He deserved time.
Then he asked:
“Do I have sisters?”
I laughed through tears.
“Four.”
His eyes widened.
“Four?”
For the first time, joy entered the room.
Then Diane’s expression changed.
“There’s something else.”
Of course.
“What?”
She looked at Rachel.
“Your newborn.”
Rachel went rigid.
“I know Eleanor took him.”
Diane shook her head.
“She didn’t.”
“Then who?”
Diane looked at Samuel.
“He did.”
We stared.
Samuel’s face went pale.
“I didn't mean to.”
A six-year-old child could not steal a newborn.
Then he whispered:
“Grandpa came.”
Julian froze.
May you like
His father, Henry Mercer, had died two years earlier.
Or so we believed.
