Chapter 6
Rachel read the message twice.
Then she pulled Lily closer.
“Why would Diane write this?”
“I don’t know,” Mercer said.
“Whoever Caroline Price was, she lived in Briar County. We’ve contacted authorities there.”
“That’s four hours away,” I said.
“What does Lily have to do with her?”
Mercer hesitated.
“We’re still investigating.”
I recognized the hesitation.
“You know something.”
“Caroline worked at St. Anne’s Hospital.”
Rachel stiffened.
“That’s where Lily was born.”
Mercer nodded.
“What are you suggesting?” I demanded.
“Nothing yet. The hospital closed three years ago, and many records were transferred. We need time.”
My phone buzzed.
A message from an unknown number appeared.
A photograph loaded slowly.
Lily was asleep in Rachel’s arms in the hospital hallway.
The picture had been taken less than a minute earlier.
Beneath it were six words.
You were given the wrong daughter.
I jumped to my feet and looked around.
Nurses moved through the corridor.
Families sat in plastic chairs.
A man near the elevator turned away.
“Mercer.”
He saw my face.
I showed him the message.
Officers locked down the floor.
They searched stairwells, bathrooms, waiting rooms, and exits.
No one found the photographer.
Rachel shook Lily awake.
“We’re going home.”
Mercer stopped her.
“Your house may not be secure.”
“Neither is this hospital.”
He arranged for us to use a protected family room while officers reviewed the security cameras.
The photograph had been sent from an unregistered internet number.
The hospital footage showed a person in a gray jacket raising a phone toward us.
A cap and medical mask concealed the face.
The person entered a stairwell and vanished.
“It could be Diane,” Rachel said.
“The height matches,” Mercer answered.
Lily listened from the couch.
“What does wrong daughter mean?”
I knelt in front of her.
“It means Grandma is trying to scare us.”
“Am I your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Even if the hospital made a mistake?”
Rachel began to cry.
“There was no mistake.”
Lily touched her face.
“Then don’t cry.”
Rachel hugged her.
Mercer received a call from Briar County.
He stepped into the hall.
When he returned, he looked troubled.
“Caroline Price was a maternity nurse when Lily was born.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” I said.
“No. But the hospital investigated her for altering two infant records.”
Rachel stared at him.
“When?”
“Five years ago.”
“Why weren’t we told?”
“The inquiry was closed without charges. One family refused genetic testing, and the second could not be located.”
“Which family were we?”
“We don’t know yet.”
I remembered Diane’s strange behavior after Lily’s birth.
She had visited the hospital before any other relative.
She took Lily from Rachel’s arms and carried her into the hallway despite our objections.
At the time, I thought she was being controlling.
Now every memory felt dangerous.
“Diane knew Caroline,” I said.
Mercer nodded.
“Robert says they were childhood friends.”
Rachel shook her head.
“No. Diane came to the hospital because Adam called her.”
“I called her after Lily was born. She arrived twenty minutes later.”
“That fast?”
“She said she was nearby.”
Mercer wrote something down.
“What time was Lily born?”
“Two seventeen in the morning.”
“Why would Diane be near the hospital at two in the morning?”
I had never asked.
Rachel stood.
“We need a DNA test.”
“Mom,” Lily whispered.
Rachel looked at her and realized how frightened she sounded.
I took her hand.
“Whatever a test says, she is our daughter.”
“I know.”
“Then we do it calmly.”
A nurse collected samples from all three of us.
The hospital offered an urgent test because of the criminal investigation.
Results would take twenty-four hours.
Diane’s message demanded something tomorrow.
That could not be a coincidence.
We moved to a hotel under police protection.
Ethan slept beside the door with a baseball bat.
I took it away.
“You’re not responsible for protecting everyone.”
“But Grandma keeps coming.”
“The police are watching.”
“She got into the hospital.”
I sat on the edge of his bed.
“You protected Lily in the shed. You helped us prove the truth with your watch. You’ve done more than any child should have to do.”
“What if she takes her?”
“She won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
He was right.
I could not promise the world would suddenly become safe.
“I can promise that you won’t face her alone.”
He considered that.
Then he nodded.
At three in the morning, the fire alarm sounded.
Rachel grabbed Lily.
I grabbed Ethan.
A voice ordered everyone to evacuate.
When I opened the door, smoke filled the hallway.
Guests ran toward the stairs.
Our police guard was gone.
We followed the crowd.
Halfway down the stairwell, a woman in a hotel uniform appeared.
“This way,” she said. “That exit is blocked.”
She opened a service door.
I recognized her eyes.
“Diane.”
She sprayed something into my face.
My eyes burned.
I stumbled backward.
Rachel screamed.
Diane grabbed Lily.
Ethan struck her arm with the emergency flashlight he had taken from the wall.
Diane lost her grip.
Lily dropped to the floor.
Rachel pulled her away.
I tackled my mother.
We crashed against the railing.
She clawed my face.
“You ruined everything!”
“You came for my daughter.”
“She isn’t yours.”
I pinned her wrists.
“Then why do you want her?”
Diane smiled.
“Because she’s worth more than all of you.”
Footsteps thundered up the stairs.
Mercer and two officers appeared.
They handcuffed Diane while hotel staff extinguished a small fire in a laundry cart.
She had started it to force the evacuation.
As Mercer led her away, she called to Rachel.
“Ask your husband where he was the night Lily was born.”
Rachel stared at me.
“I was with you.”
Diane laughed.
“Not the whole night.”
At the police station, Diane refused to answer questions.
She demanded a lawyer.
Her false identification and cash were found in a rental car behind the hotel.
She also carried a syringe containing a sedative.
Mercer believed she planned to drug Lily.
The DNA results arrived that afternoon.
The doctor asked Rachel and me to sit down.
My heart pounded so hard I could hear it.
“The test confirms that Mrs. Carter is Lily’s biological mother.”
Rachel gripped my hand.
“And Adam?”
The doctor hesitated.
“The test excludes Mr. Carter as Lily’s biological father.”
The room went silent.
Rachel released my hand.
“No.”
I could not breathe.
“That’s impossible.”
“There is no possibility you’re mistaken?” I asked.
“We repeated the paternal comparison.”
Rachel stood.
“I never cheated on him.”
The doctor said nothing.
“I never slept with another man.”
“I’m not making any assumptions.”
Rachel turned to me.
“You were there. You know.”
I remembered the months before Lily’s birth.
Our marriage had been difficult, but I had never believed Rachel unfaithful.
“I believe you.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“How can you?”
“Because Diane knew this result before we did.”
Someone had arranged it.
At the police station, Mercer questioned Diane with her attorney present.
We watched through a window.
“Who is Lily’s biological father?” he asked.
Diane smiled.
“Ask Caroline.”
“She’s dead.”
“Then I suppose the secret died with her.”
“Why did you try to take Lily?”
“I wanted to protect her.”
“From whom?”
“Adam.”
I entered the room before anyone could stop me.
Her lawyer objected.
Mercer told me to leave.
I ignored both of them.
“You said she was worth more than all of us.”
Diane’s smile weakened.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“My DNA was replaced, wasn’t it?”
She looked at the camera in the corner.
That tiny movement gave me my answer.
“You expected us to test Lily.”
Her attorney leaned toward her.
“Do not respond.”
I continued.
“You wanted us to believe she wasn’t mine. You wanted Rachel and me to turn against each other.”
Diane looked at Rachel through the window.
“I didn’t need to create doubt. It was already there.”
Rachel entered behind me.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
Diane’s face hardened.
“You forged Adam’s signature to save your mother.”
“I did.”
“You lied for three years.”
“I did.”
“You think he’ll forgive you?”
“I don’t know.”
Rachel stepped closer.
“But I know you’re more afraid of us telling the truth than we are of hearing it.”
For the first time, Diane looked uncertain.
Mercer ordered us out.
A second laboratory tested the original samples under direct police supervision.
Six hours later, the new results arrived.
I was Lily’s biological father.
The first test had been altered in the hospital computer.
Security records showed that someone accessed the results using a retired employee’s credentials.
Caroline Price’s credentials.
But Caroline had been dead for eight years.
Mercer traced the access to the home of Caroline’s surviving daughter, Vanessa.
Police entered the house that night.
Vanessa was gone.
In her basement, they found printers, forged documents, hospital records, and photographs of our family.
One wall was covered with pictures of Lily.
In the center was a copy of my father’s will.
This version named Lily as the sole beneficiary of a five-million-dollar life insurance trust.
The money would be controlled by Diane if Lily’s parents were declared unfit.
Rachel looked at the document.
“That’s why she locked the children in the shed.”
I nodded.
She had planned for me to lose control.
She had prepared the guardianship petition.
She had created evidence against both of us.
If she gained custody of Lily, she gained control of the trust.
Then Mercer found a second document.
May you like
It was a death certificate prepared in advance.
The name on it was mine.
