Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE BLACK CAR
Margaret Vale took us to a hotel rather than her home.
She said it was safer.
That word followed me all the way into Hartford.
Safer from whom?
Grant?
The sender of the photograph?
Or the person who had allegedly stolen a child six years ago?
The presidential suite occupied the top floor of an old luxury hotel overlooking the rain-soaked city.
Margaret’s chauffeur, Elias, locked the door behind us and checked every room before allowing Lily to remove her coat.
Lily sat on a velvet sofa, clutching a mug of warm chocolate.
Her cheeks were pale.
She kept asking when Daddy would stop being angry.
Each time, I felt another piece of my heart break.
Margaret stood near the window.
She was in her early seventies, elegant and composed, yet her hands shook whenever she looked at Lily.
“You said my sister was trying to contact you,” I began.
Margaret nodded.
“My daughter, Caroline, gave birth at St. Catherine’s six years ago.”
“What does that have to do with Evelyn?”
“She was a nurse in the maternity wing.”
I knew Evelyn had worked at the hospital.
I also knew she had died there during an electrical fire.
What I had never understood was why she had asked me to meet her that night.
She called while I was eight months pregnant and told me she had discovered something terrible.
Before I reached the hospital, the fire alarm sounded.
By dawn, Evelyn was dead.
And my own baby was gone.
The official explanation was that my daughter had died shortly after an emergency delivery caused by smoke inhalation.
I had barely been conscious when a nurse placed a newborn in my arms.
She told me the baby had survived.
I never questioned it.
I believed Lily was mine because every person around me said she was.
Margaret opened her handbag and removed a photograph.
A young woman with auburn hair smiled beside a hospital bed.
In her arms was a newborn wrapped in a white blanket embroidered with tiny golden birds.
Lily’s pendant had the same bird design.
“This is Caroline,” Margaret said.
“She died three days after this photograph was taken.”
“How?”
“They claimed she suffered an embolism.”
Margaret’s voice hardened.
“But before she died, she called me. She said her baby had been taken from the nursery and replaced with another infant.”
I sat slowly.
The room seemed to tilt.
“What happened to the other baby?”
“No one would tell me.”
“Was Caroline confused?”
“That is what the hospital claimed.”
Margaret crossed the room and knelt in front of Lily.
“May I see your necklace?”
Lily looked at me.
I nodded.
She carefully pulled out the pendant.
Margaret turned it over.
On the back were three tiny engraved letters.
C. E. V.
Caroline Elise Vale.
Margaret covered her mouth.
“I gave this to Caroline when she was twelve. She said she would pass it to her daughter.”
My mind raced.
“Evelyn gave it to me the night Lily was born. She came into my room covered in soot. She put Lily in my arms and told me never to let anyone take her.”
“Did she say whose child she was?”
“No.”
“What happened next?”
“A doctor injected something into my IV. I fell asleep. When I woke up, Evelyn was dead, and Grant was sitting beside me holding Lily.”
Margaret stared at me.
“Which doctor?”
“I don’t remember.”
A soft knock sounded at the door.
Elias checked the security screen before admitting a man in a dark suit.
He introduced himself as Daniel Cross, Margaret’s attorney.
He carried two sealed envelopes and a portable DNA kit.
“We need proof before we make accusations,” he said.
Margaret swabbed the inside of her cheek.
I did the same.
Lily thought it was a strange game.
Daniel promised expedited results within twelve hours.
As he packed the samples, his phone vibrated.
He read the message.
His expression changed.
“What is it?” Margaret asked.
He turned the screen toward us.
A security camera at my house had captured a figure standing on the porch twenty minutes after Grant threw us out.
The person wore a dark hood.
They placed a package beside the door.
Then they looked directly into the camera.
It was a woman.
A woman I recognized.
My mother-in-law, Helen Mercer.
Grant’s mother had died two years earlier.
I had attended her funeral.
I had watched her coffin being lowered into the ground.
Yet the woman in the footage had Helen’s face.
She removed her hood and smiled at the camera.
Then she held up a handwritten sign.
NORA HAS THE WRONG CHILD.
Margaret gripped the table.
Daniel enlarged the image.
May you like
There was another line beneath the first.
THE OTHER GIRL IS STILL ALIVE.
