Chapter 8 - The Name My Mother Erased
Inside the envelope was my birth certificate.
Or what looked like one.
My name was correct.
Natalie Elizabeth Brooks.
My birthday was correct.
But the hospital was wrong.
I had always believed I was born at Cook County Hospital.
The document said St. Agnes.
Rachel read it twice.
“No.”
Mara sat at my kitchen table while snow accumulated outside.
“Elizabeth was your mother,” she said quickly. “Nothing changes that.”
“Why would you say it like that?”
Mara’s eyes filled.
“Because she wasn’t your biological mother.”
The room tilted.
Rachel grabbed my hand.
Mara explained that on the night she escaped St. Agnes, Elizabeth helped
two women.
Mara was one.
The second was a frightened nineteen-year-old named Caroline Shaw.
Caroline had delivered a baby girl.
Her wealthy parents planned to place the child privately and erase the
pregnancy.
Elizabeth took the baby.
Me.
“Why?”
“Caroline begged her.”
“Where is Caroline?”
Mara looked toward Graham.
“Dead.”
“How?”
“Officially? Pneumonia.”
“And actually?”
“I don’t know.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“I’m forty years old. My mother never told me.”
“She loved you.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Lucy appeared in the hallway.
“Mom?”
I wiped my face.
“I’m okay.”
She gave me the look children give adults when they know adults are
lying.
“No, you’re not.”
She climbed into my lap.
I held her.
Mara watched us.
“Elizabeth was terrified someone would take you. Charles discovered she
had helped me escape. She made a bargain. She promised never to expose
St. Agnes if he left you alone.”
“So Charles knew who I was?”
“Yes.”
“Who was my father?”
Mara hesitated.
“I never knew.”
Graham leaned against the counter.
“Could Senator Reed know?”
“Yes.”
The police found Reed before sunset.
He had not fled.
He was at a private church preparing to deliver Christmas food baskets
for television cameras.
His arrest became national news.
He denied everything.
Then investigators searched his home.
Behind a false wall in his study they found St. Agnes files.
Hundreds.
One had my name.
Another had Julia’s.
Another had Mara’s.
The detective called me personally.
“There’s something unusual in yours.”
“What?”
“The father’s name is redacted.”
“Can you recover it?”
“We’re trying.”
Graham looked at me.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because secrets don’t disappear because they’re old.”
Mara smiled faintly.
“Elizabeth said that too.”
That evening, DNA results arrived for Julia’s baby.
Graham opened the report.
He read it once.
Then again.
Julia was the biological mother.
The father was not Graham.
It was his cousin, Daniel Vale, a senior executive in Vale Holdings.
Daniel had died two years earlier.
Harold immediately understood.
“Daniel’s shares.”
Daniel’s estate held twelve percent of the company. Under an old family
agreement, a biological child could claim them.
Monica had not been planning one inheritance theft.
She had been combining two.
Julia’s daughter could claim Daniel’s shares and Mara’s inheritance
while Evelyn’s fake motherhood placed control with Monica.
It was breathtaking in its greed.
But there was another problem.
Daniel had supposedly been infertile.
His medical records said so.
Dr. Pike had falsified those too.
Mara whispered, “They were collecting genetic material.”
Nobody wanted to ask the next question.
I did.
“From whom else?”
Harold opened the recovered St. Agnes index.
Names filled page after page.
Then Lucy pointed.
“Mom, there’s Grandma.”
Elizabeth Brooks.
Beside her name was a code.
B-17.
My file carried the same code.
So did Caroline Shaw’s.
And one other person.
THOMAS REED.
I stared at the page.
“No.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Graham whispered, “Natalie…”
Senator Reed might not simply have known who my father was.
He might have been my father.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
A man’s voice said, “Before you decide Thomas Reed is your father, ask
Mara why she was in the delivery room.”
I looked at Mara.
She had heard.
Her face lost all color.
The caller continued.
“Everyone has lied to you, Natalie.”
“Who are you?”
“You’ll know soon.”
The line went dead.
Lucy looked at Mara.
“Why were you there?”
May you like
Mara’s hands began trembling.
“Because Caroline Shaw wasn’t your mother.”
