Chapter 6 - THE SECOND CHILD
Silas Vane had walked into my hospital wing while I was hundreds of miles away. He had passed through security carrying an invitation issued under my dead father's authority, and now he wanted to explain himself as if the last twelve years were a misunderstanding over dinner reservations.
“Put him on,” I told Gabriel.
A pause. Then Silas's voice, smooth and familiar, flowed through the phone.
“Dean. Thank God you're safe. This has become an awful mess.”
“Where are you standing?”
“Outside Evelyn's room. She refused to speak with me.”
“Good. Put the phone on speaker, step away from her door, and stay where the police can see you.”
He gave a soft laugh. “Still issuing orders. Your father would be proud.”
“Don't mention my father.”
The laugh vanished. “You'll regret taking advice from that woman.”
“Which woman? Evelyn, my sister, or the attorney documenting the crimes you helped hide?”
For the first time in my life, Silas had no immediate answer.
“Are you with Isabella?” he asked.
I looked at my sister, who stood a few feet away beneath the museum's emergency lights. She shook her head so slightly that only I noticed.
“That's none of your business,” I replied.
“Dean, you don't understand what she's carrying. If she releases those papers, people will die.”
“Because the papers are false?”
“Because they're true.”
It was the closest thing to honesty I'd ever heard from him.
“Then let the authorities decide what they prove.”
Silas's breathing changed. I heard a door open, a shouted instruction, and a clatter. Gabriel came back on the line.
“He's trying to leave,” he said. “Police are escorting him to an interview room.”
“Keep Lily with Helena and Celia. Don't let Silas near either of them.”
“Understood.”
I ended the call and looked at Naomi. “We need to move Isabella somewhere safe.”
“First, we need her consent,” Naomi said.
Isabella folded her arms. “I want to come with you.”
“The palace is dangerous,” I told her.
“So is staying here. And at least there, I can look the people who lied to me in the face.”
I recognized the decision in her expression. No amount of persuasion would change it. The woman in front of me was not the baby I'd imagined rescuing. She had survived a complicated life and earned the right to make her own choices.
We traveled by a route arranged through local authorities, stopping only once for fuel. Isabella slept for part of the journey with her forehead against the window. She woke just before sunrise and asked whether I remembered our mother.
“Some things,” I said. “The smell of her gloves. The way she used to sing while looking for keys. She always forgot where she left them.”
Isabella smiled faintly. “I have the same problem.”
“She'd accuse my father of hiding them.”
“Did he?”
“Once. He said he wanted an excuse to drive her to work.”
She laughed, then covered her mouth as though it were disloyal to feel happy. I told her another story, about how our mother had forbidden us from feeding the koi in the garden because I kept giving them bread. By the time we reached the city, Isabella had begun asking questions instead of watching the road for threats.
At the palace, the atmosphere was colder than the weather. Police stood beside the wrought-iron gates. An independent security firm had taken over access control, and every badge issued by my household was being reviewed. Gabriel greeted us at the entrance with an expression that told me he had not slept.
“Silas has an attorney,” he said. “He isn't under arrest, but investigators have restricted access to the evidence rooms. He's claiming he came to warn us about an imminent threat.”
“Did they find the photograph?”
“Not yet.”
Isabella looked toward the stairs. “Where's Evelyn?”
“In the medical wing. She asked about you.”
They embraced so hard Evelyn winced. Isabella apologized, then held her carefully. I watched from the door as two women who'd been forced to live as ghosts finally stood together in daylight. I had no right to interrupt that reunion.
Later, Naomi brought me to the archive room. On a screen she displayed the second baby photograph recovered from a damaged backup of Evelyn's files. My mother sat in the old nursery holding Isabella in a blue blanket and another baby in yellow. Standing beside her was a woman wearing a nurse's uniform.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Margaret Dunn,” Naomi said. “We found her through a retirement-home registry in Vermont. She's agreed to speak to investigators.”
“And the baby?”
“We don't know. But the date is six months after Isabella's public death notice.”
I stared. “So my mother was still seeing Isabella.”
“Apparently. Whatever happened wasn't one clean disappearance.”
Naomi enlarged a corner of the photograph. An embroidered letter M appeared on the second baby's blanket.
“There's no reliable identification yet,” she said. “We need to avoid making assumptions.”
She was right. Every catastrophe in this family began when someone decided they understood a story without asking enough questions.
Margaret arrived by secure video link that afternoon. Her white hair was neatly braided. She sat beside a window, holding a mug in both hands, and looked at me with immediate recognition.
“You have your mother's eyes,” she said.
“People tell me that.”
“She'd hate what happened to this family.”
I let the words settle. “Tell me about the second child.”
Margaret's face tightened. “Her name was Mara. She wasn't yours by blood. She belonged to a young woman employed by the Alliance charity. The mother had been pressured to surrender the baby after she reported stolen funds. Your mother intervened.”
“Where is Mara now?”
“I don't know. She was transferred to another family before I could stop it. Your mother had photographs taken as evidence. She kept copies because the official files were being destroyed.”
Isabella, sitting beside me, turned pale. “Mara,” she repeated. “I knew a girl with that name.”
We all looked at her.
“At the Ward house. I was too young to remember much, but Evelyn told me there was another child. She said we used to play together before the fire.”
Evelyn, who had joined the call, nodded slowly. “Mara was fostered with us. After the attack, we couldn't keep everyone together. A social worker took her to a safe placement. We lost contact.”
“Why didn't you tell me?” Isabella asked.
“Because I thought she was safe. I was wrong to assume that, and I should have looked harder.”
Margaret spoke again. “Mara's mother kept a record of every fraudulent placement she knew about. When she disappeared, the record disappeared too. The ledger Evelyn saved may be only half the evidence.”
“Who was Mara's mother?” Naomi asked.
Margaret shook her head. “Her legal name was changed several times. But she had a nickname. The Queen Without a Crown.”
I felt the air leave my lungs.
“I thought that meant my mother.”
“Your mother was called that by society reporters,” Margaret said. “But inside the charity, the nickname belonged to the woman who refused to sign away her daughter. Her name was Rebecca Vale.”
I looked at Silas's surname ringing in my ears.
“Vale,” I repeated. “Any relation to Silas Vane?”
“No,” Margaret said. “Different family. But Silas took Rebecca's case personally. After she refused the adoption papers, she vanished.”
Naomi leaned forward. “Do you have any records?”
“One page. I kept it for twenty years because I couldn't bear to destroy it.”
The document arrived through a secure channel moments later. It was a copy of a custody petition. Several signatures had been crossed out. One remained clear: Rebecca Vale.
Beside it, in a different hand, someone had written an authorization for emergency removal.
The name at the bottom was my father's.
I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.
“Maybe he was trying to protect the child,” Isabella said softly.
“Maybe,” I answered. “But we're not going to decide that because we want it to be true.”
That evening the investigators questioned Silas about the petition. He denied ever meeting Rebecca. Then Naomi showed him an old photograph from the charity's annual banquet. He was standing beside her, one hand on her shoulder, smiling for the camera.
He stopped talking.
Thirty minutes later, my phone received a text from an unknown number.
YOU FOUND MARA'S NAME. NOW ASK WHO RAISED HER.
Attached was a photograph taken that very afternoon in my own palace gardens.
It showed Lily sitting beside an elegant woman in a white coat.
The woman's face had been circled in red.
Below it were four words.
May you like
HELENA CROSS KNOWS EVERYTHING.
I didn't forward the message to my guards. I sent it to Naomi and asked her to preserve the metadata. Whoever sent it wanted me to treat accusation as proof, and I had almost done exactly that with Marco's predecessor, with Silas, and with every person who had ever disappointed me. It would have been easy to march into the suite and accuse Helena in front of Lily. Instead, I walked down the hall alone and watched through the open doorway while she helped the child fasten a button on a stuffed bear's shirt. Helena looked tired. Lily looked safe. Neither of those things settled the question, but they reminded me that truth required patience. I knocked, waited for Helena to look up, and said, “Doctor, there's a question I should have asked you before you came into my house.”
