Chapter 4 - LAUREN CALLS
That night, my phone rang at 2:13 a.m.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
A woman's voice whispered:
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
“My name is Lauren.”
I sat upright.
The room suddenly felt too small.
“Lauren?”
“I heard what happened.”
“How?”
“Because they called me.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Who?”
“Diane.”
Silence followed.
Then Lauren said something that changed everything.
“She told me you were going to discover what happened to my baby.”
My heart pounded.
“What happened to your baby?”
Lauren began crying.
“I never abandoned Ryan.”
“I know.”
“I was forced to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because my baby wasn't Ryan's.”
I couldn't speak.
Lauren continued.
“The child belonged to someone else.”
“Who?”
“My doctor.”
The words were almost impossible to process.
Lauren explained that during her pregnancy, she discovered that Ryan's family had arranged for her medical records to be altered.
The doctor treating her was secretly connected to Diane.
When Lauren gave birth, the baby was immediately taken from the hospital.
She was told the child had died.
But Lauren never received a death certificate.
She spent years searching.
Then, five years ago, she found evidence that the baby was alive.
A new identity.
A new family.
A new city.
“What was the child's name?” I asked.
Lauren whispered it.
“Evan.”
My father, standing outside the bedroom door, suddenly dropped the hospital file.
He had heard the name.
He walked inside.
“Claire,” he said, “Evan is not just Lauren's son.”
I stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
Dad opened another document.
It was a DNA report.
Ryan's family had been secretly testing relatives.
One name appeared beside Evan.
Ryan.
But the result wasn't a match.
Dad pointed to another name.
Mine.
My breath stopped.
The DNA report showed that Evan was biologically related to me.
Not through Ryan.
Through my mother's family.
Lauren had been carrying my mother's grandson.
May you like
A child connected to an inheritance that Diane had spent twenty years trying to control.
The mystery had just become personal.
