Chapter 6 - The Nurse Who Disappeared
Lydia Shaw had vanished seventeen years ago.
Grandma never stopped looking.
Rebecca’s evidence contained checks, private-investigator reports and one recorded voicemail.
We played it on the terrace.
A frightened woman’s voice filled the silence.
“Margaret, they changed the bracelets. I saw it. I should have said something, but Mr. Mercer threatened my license.”
Mr. Mercer.
Which one?
My father?
Grandfather?
Daniel?
The recording continued.
“The baby they said died was breathing when I left.”
Camille started sobbing.
I couldn’t move.
Mother whispered:
“That woman was unstable.”
Rebecca stopped the recording.
“Margaret didn’t think so.”
The second half had been corrupted.
But Grandma left a location.
A storage unit outside Portland.
Mother immediately said:
“There will be nothing there.”
Too quickly.
I looked at her.
“You’ve been there.”
“No.”
“You know what Grandma found.”
She denied it.
Father didn’t.
“Eleanor went last year.”
Mother stared at him.
“How do you know?”
“I followed you.”
Their marriage had apparently become mutual surveillance.
Father saw Mother meet someone outside the facility.
A woman in her sixties.
He photographed her.
Rebecca compared the image to Lydia’s old nursing-license photograph.
Older.
Same woman.
Lydia Shaw was alive.
Mother had lied.
Again.
“Why did you meet her?”
Mother’s composure finally shattered.
“Because she called me!”
“What did she want?”
“Money.”
“For what?”
“To stay silent.”
“About which baby?”
Mother looked at Camille.
Then at me.
“I don’t know.”
I stopped believing that phrase.
Rebecca contacted investigators.
Lydia’s last known address was an apartment outside Providence.
Police arrived.
Empty.
But someone had left recently.
Coffee warm.
Medicine on the counter.
A suitcase missing.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
“Naomi?”
An elderly woman.
“Yes.”
“My name is Lydia Shaw.”
Everyone around the terrace froze.
“I knew your grandmother.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Were Camille and I twins?”
Silence.
“No.”
Camille gripped my arm.
“Then what happened?”
Lydia started crying.
“Two babies were in that room.”
“One was my mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“And the other?”
A long pause.
“Daniel Sloane brought her.”
I looked at Daniel.
He went white.
“What?”
Lydia continued.
“He arrived with a newborn wrapped in a blue blanket.”
Daniel shook his head violently.
“That never happened.”
The voice on the phone whispered:
“Ask him about Caroline.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
Mother noticed.
“Who is Caroline?”
He said nothing.
I stepped toward him.
“Daniel.”
His hands began trembling.
“Caroline was my younger sister.”
“Was?”
“She died.”
“When?”
“Twenty-eight years ago.”
The exact year Camille and I were born.
Lydia’s voice returned.
“No, Daniel.”
He stared at the phone.
“Caroline didn’t die.”
May you like
Then Lydia said the sentence that made Mother drop her glass.
“She gave birth to Naomi.”
