Chapter 5 - Camille’s Birth Certificate
Camille laughed.
Nobody joined her.
“This is insane.”
Rebecca opened Grandma’s file.
Inside were two birth certificates.
Both carried Camille’s name.
Different dates.
Different hospitals.
Different signatures.
Mother tried to leave.
Rebecca blocked her.
“You can walk away, Eleanor. The documents remain.”
Camille grabbed the first certificate.
“Which one is real?”
Mother said nothing.
“Mom!”
“The second.”
“Why are there two?”
Father stood at the terrace railing with his back toward us.
Camille turned toward him.
“Dad?”
He didn’t move.
Grandma had discovered the duplicate while tracing my trust.
The first certificate had been filed, then quietly replaced three months later through a petition handled by Daniel.
Except Daniel looked genuinely shocked.
“I didn’t file this.”
His signature appeared on the petition.
Forged.
Just like Grandma’s deed.
Someone had been using Daniel’s credentials for decades.
Suddenly even he was part of the evidence.
Rebecca explained the dates.
Camille was legally recorded as born eighteen months after me.
The original certificate suggested something else.
We were born only eleven months apart.
Biologically possible.
But the hospital listed on Camille’s first certificate had closed before her supposed birth.
Camille’s face crumpled.
“Am I adopted?”
Mother whispered:
“No.”
“Then tell me the truth!”
Mother looked at me.
Not Camille.
Me.
That frightened me.
“You were never supposed to learn any of this.”
“I learned you slept with Daniel.”
Her face tightened.
“That affair ended before Naomi was born.”
Daniel shook his head.
“No.”
Mother glared at him.
“Stop.”
“We were together afterward.”
Father spun around.
“You told me once.”
Mother shouted:
“You had affairs too!”
Within seconds, the perfect Mercer family became exactly what Grandma’s letter promised:
A lie looking for somewhere to live.
I picked up Camille’s original certificate.
There was one handwritten notation near the bottom.
Twin record cross-reference.
I stopped breathing.
“Rebecca.”
She saw it.
So did Camille.
“No,” she whispered.
Mother collapsed into her chair.
Camille looked from her to me.
“We’re twins?”
The dates contradicted that.
Unless the dates themselves were false.
Rebecca requested certified hospital archives while we sat there.
Twenty minutes later, her assistant called.
The original birth ledger existed.
Two female infants had been delivered to Eleanor Mercer on the same night.
Baby A.
Baby B.
One listed as deceased six hours later.
My mouth went dry.
“Which one was I?”
Rebecca could not answer.
Camille began shaking.
Then Daniel whispered:
“Eleanor.”
Mother refused to look up.
“What happened to the second baby?”
She covered her face.
“I don’t know.”
Father laughed bitterly.
Everyone turned.
He looked at Mother with absolute contempt.
“She knows.”
“Richard, don’t.”
“You want truth?”
He pointed at me.
“Ask her why Margaret took Naomi to Maine the same week a woman named Lydia Shaw started blackmailing this family.”
Rebecca froze.
I recognized the name.
Lydia Shaw appeared throughout Grandma’s hidden ledger.
The person receiving the Blue Harbor payments.
I looked at Father.
“Who was Lydia?”
He answered:
“The nurse who delivered you.”
May you like
Then he looked at Camille.
“And according to her, one of you was never Eleanor’s baby.”
