Chapter 10 - The Wrong Son
Ethan immediately demanded DNA testing.
Nathan agreed.
Neither man slept.
Two days later, the results arrived.
Ethan and Nathan were biological brothers.
Both were Richard’s sons.
For several seconds, they simply stared at the report.
Then Nathan laughed nervously.
“So child eleven isn’t us.”
Claire looked at the folder again.
“Inside the Blackwood family doesn’t necessarily mean Richard’s children.”
Rosa remembered something.
Eleanor had a younger sister.
Margaret Vale.
Margaret had died when her daughter, Sophie, was an infant.
Sophie had been raised by Eleanor.
She was now forty-one and lived in Chicago.
Ethan called her.
Sophie answered cheerfully until Ethan mentioned the adoption files.
Then she went silent.
“I wondered when someone would find those.”
Ethan stood.
“You knew?”
“Not everything.”
Sophie told them Eleanor had confessed something during a drunken argument years earlier.
Margaret had never given birth.
Sophie’s birth certificate was false.
Claire stared at the phone.
“Who are your biological parents?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire opened folder eleven again.
She held it toward the light.
Indentations appeared on the empty page.
Someone had written on the sheet that once rested above it.
Nathan rubbed graphite gently across the paper.
Letters emerged.
MOTHER: REBECCA MORGAN.
Claire froze.
Ethan whispered.
“Your mother?”
Claire could not speak.
Another line appeared.
FATHER: RICHARD BLACKWOOD.
Ethan stepped backward.
That meant Sophie was Richard’s biological daughter.
And Rebecca’s.
Claire stared at the page.
Rebecca had not given birth to Claire.
But years later, she had apparently given birth to Richard’s child.
Sophie.
Ethan looked devastated.
“My father had a daughter with Rebecca.”
Nathan whispered.
“And Mom raised her.”
Claire understood.
Eleanor had taken Rebecca’s child in retaliation.
Rebecca had taken Claire to protect her.
Two women had spent decades each raising the other woman’s daughter.
But the cruelty was not symmetrical.
Rebecca had rescued Claire.
Eleanor had stolen Sophie.
Claire called Sophie back.
“Sophie.”
“Yes?”
“Rebecca Morgan was your mother.”
Silence.
Then Sophie began crying.
Claire closed her eyes.
There was now one person they had to confront.
Eleanor.
Before they could leave the chapel, Detective Hale received a call.
His expression hardened.
“What happened?”
He put the phone down slowly.
“Eleanor disappeared.”
Her ankle monitor had been found beside an abandoned car.
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And security footage showed she had not left alone.
Anna Whitmore was missing too.
