Chapter 12 - Robert's Last Disappearance
Margaret had identified Robert after a highway accident nineteen years earlier.
The body was badly burned.
Dental records confirmed identity.
Or so she was told.
Caroline claimed those dental records belonged to another Hawthorne associate.
Why would Robert fake his death?
Because the people behind the birth-record scheme had begun searching for him.
Robert possessed the missing maternal-infant mapping ledger.
The only document capable of proving which child belonged to which mother.
He disappeared to protect it.
Margaret laughed bitterly.
“You expect me to believe he abandoned his son for nineteen years to protect a notebook?”
Caroline shook her head.
“No. I think he abandoned Ethan because he was afraid of what the notebook said.”
That hurt Ethan.
I saw it.
Then investigators traced the RHarper login.
Not to some foreign server.
To a motel fourteen miles away.
Police found the room empty.
Inside:
An old man’s medication.
A laptop.
Photographs of our wedding.
And a handwritten note.
CLAIRE OPENED THE CHEST TOO EARLY.
I felt cold.
Another line:
ETHAN MUST NEVER LEARN WHO B-17'S MOTHER IS UNTIL HE KNOWS WHO HIS FATHER WAS.
Why?
Because parentage was only half the secret.
Then the motel camera showed the occupant leaving.
Seventy-four years old.
Thin.
Walking with a cane.
Margaret watched the footage and began crying.
“Robert.”
Alive.
The dead man had attended our wedding from a distance.
He had watched his son marry.
He had watched Caroline return.
Then manipulated the DNA portal to make Ethan and me believe we were siblings.
Why inflict something so monstrous?
Ethan answered before anyone else.
“To separate us.”
Maybe Robert believed our marriage was dangerous.
Not morally.
Genetically?
No.
The authentic test ruled out close biological relation.
Then why?
We found another note on the laptop.
If Claire remains Ethan’s wife, she inherits access.
Access to what?
The Harper Family Trust contained almost no money.
At least officially.
Then Margaret revealed Robert had created a strange marital clause.
Upon Ethan’s first legal marriage, control of a sealed trust archive transferred jointly to Ethan and his spouse.
That was why the cedar chest was to be opened after marriage.
My wedding had activated something.
Not inheritance money.
Authority.
The right to release Robert’s protected Hawthorne records.
Caroline wanted them exposed.
Margaret wanted them controlled.
Robert wanted our marriage dissolved before Ethan and I realized what we jointly possessed.
Then Ethan found a file on the laptop.
Title:
B17_FATHER.
He opened it.
One photograph.
A young Robert Harper holding a newborn.
On the back:
My son.
Margaret gasped.
Ethan whispered:
“Robert was my biological father?”
Possibly.
Then I noticed the woman standing behind Robert in the photograph.
Not Margaret.
Not Caroline.
Not Susan.
I knew her face anyway.
She had been at my wedding.
Standing beside me in almost every family photograph.
My grandmother.
May you like
Susan’s mother.
Eleanor Bennett.
