Chapter 2 - The Mark on Every First Son
Julian locked the hospital-room door.
Not violently.
Quietly.
That frightened me more.
“What birthmark?”
Nobody answered.
I held my newborn tighter.
“Someone tells me now.”
Evelyn sank into the visitor chair.
“A red crescent.”
Julian touched his own shoulder.
I had seen the mark thousands of times.
A small reddish crescent beneath his collarbone.
I never cared.
Apparently, I should have.
“Every firstborn boy in our family has it,” Evelyn said.
“Every?”
“Julian. His father. His grandfather.”
I stared at her.
“That’s not how genetics works.”
“No,” she whispered.
“That’s why we should have understood sooner.”
Julian looked at the baby again.
No mark.
“Maybe he simply didn’t inherit it.”
Evelyn shook her head.
Julian snapped:
“Stop doing that.”
“What?”
“Acting like you know something.”
His mother covered her mouth.
Then Sophie whispered:
“Grandma showed me another baby.”
My blood turned cold.
“What baby?”
“A picture.”
Evelyn said:
“Sophie—”
“No.”
I looked at my daughter.
“What picture?”
Sophie hesitated.
“A baby that looked like him.”
She pointed to the bassinet.
“Grandma said he was our brother.”
Julian’s face changed.
“That’s impossible.”
I was still pregnant when Sophie supposedly saw this picture.
“When?”
“Last week.”
I looked at Evelyn.
She began crying harder.
“Claire, I was trying to prepare her.”
“For what?”
No answer.
Julian grabbed his mother’s purse.
She tried to stop him.
He found an envelope.
Inside was a hospital photograph.
Newborn boy.
White blanket.
Dark hair.
A red crescent birthmark visible near his shoulder.
Written on the back:
Baby Mercer — Male.
Date:
Six days before my delivery.
I stopped breathing.
“That isn’t my baby.”
Evelyn whispered:
“No.”
Julian looked at her.
“Whose is it?”
She stared at him.
“Yours.”
I almost laughed.
“You’re insane.”
But Julian didn’t.
He looked horrified.
“What are you saying?”
Evelyn whispered:
“Claire delivered your son six days ago.”
I stared at her.
“I was pregnant six days ago.”
“I know.”
“That photograph is fake.”
“No.”
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Then she said the sentence that shattered every rule of reality in the room.
“The child Claire carried was never the child the hospital expected her to bring home.”
