Chapter 10 - The Blue Room Opens
We did not race to Mercer House alone.
I had spent enough years in the military to understand that walking into a secret property with half the suspects in one family was idiotic.
Walter called his attorney.
Pike contacted investigators already familiar with the identity-fraud issues.
We went the next morning with documentation and witnesses.
Mercer House stood above Puget Sound.
Gray stone.
Boarded windows.
Dust thick enough to preserve footsteps.
The blue room was upstairs.
Still painted dark navy.
Two locks.
Serena used her key.
I used mine.
Click.
Inside were shelves of files.
Old cassette tapes.
Ledgers.
Photographs.
Nothing supernatural.
Just thirty years of people being destroyed by paper.
Jonathan’s desk stood near the window.
One envelope sat in the center.
For my daughters.
Mom started crying.
I opened it.
Jonathan had written the letter eighteen years earlier.
Rebecca.
Serena.
Clara.
If all three of you are reading this together, then I did at least one thing right.
We weren’t together.
One daughter still missing.
The letter confirmed Rebecca was Marjorie and Jonathan’s biological child.
So was Serena.
Then I reached my paragraph.
Clara, there is something Marjorie does not know.
I stopped.
Mom stared.
I continued.
You are my daughter in every way that matters to me.
But I am not your biological father.
The room went silent.
Robert looked at me.
Mom whispered:
“No.”
Jonathan explained.
During a separation, Marjorie had a brief relationship with someone else.
She became pregnant.
Jonathan knew.
He reconciled with her and chose to raise the child as his.
Me.
Marjorie stared at the letter.
“I never told him.”
Apparently he knew anyway.
“Who is my biological father?”
The letter did not name him.
Instead:
Clara's biological father is the reason Margaret Crane began falsifying identities.
Ask Robert.
I slowly turned.
My father—my adoptive father—went pale.
“What?”
Walter stared at him.
“Robert?”
He sat down.
“I thought Jonathan never knew.”
My chest tightened.
“You know who my biological father is.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
Robert looked at Marjorie.
Then at me.
“It’s my brother.”
Silence.
I had never heard Robert had a brother.
His name was David Vale.
Older by four years.
Charming.
Troubled.
Worked briefly for Mercer Holdings.
He and Marjorie had an affair during her separation from Jonathan.
Then David disappeared before I was born.
Mom whispered:
“I thought he ran.”
Robert shook his head.
“He was arrested.”
“For what?”
Identity fraud.
David Vale had been caught using another man’s identity to transfer Mercer property.
Whose identity?
Jonathan Mercer.
May you like
The original framing operation suddenly had another suspect.
My biological father.
