Chapter 18 - Margaret's Letter
I did not show Sophie.
Not immediately.
The letter belonged to an adult conflict.
She was five.
I read it with Detective Morales.
Margaret claimed Sophie had overheard something weeks before the birthday party.
Not merely the truth about Evan.
Something about Lucas.
Sophie had apparently seen Margaret speaking to Gloria through a video call.
Lucas appeared in the background.
Sophie asked why another child had her same eyes.
Margaret realized the two children might eventually meet.
If they did, questions would follow.
DNA might follow.
The entire scheme might collapse.
Margaret wrote that Sophie had become “a genetic liability.”
I hated the phrase.
A child reduced to evidence.
But another part of the letter mattered.
Margaret wrote:
Claire believes Bellhaven created two children from her cycle.
Nathan created three.
The third is the one Evelyn cannot find.
My hands went numb.
Another embryo.
Another child.
I returned to Nathan.
He looked devastated when I showed him the letter.
“I thought that record was destroyed.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean?”
“The third embryo was transferred outside Bellhaven.”
“To where?”
“A clinic in Canada.”
“Recipient?”
“Unknown.”
“Sex?”
“Unknown.”
“Age?”
“Same as Sophie and Lucas.”
I laughed from disbelief.
“How many children am I going to discover?”
Nathan lowered his head.
“I'm sorry.”
“Stop saying that.”
My anger finally exploded.
“You don't get to apologize like this was an accounting mistake.”
“You treated human reproduction like laboratory inventory.”
“You destroyed families before those children could even speak.”
Nathan cried silently.
I did not comfort him.
The Canadian clinic had closed.
Records were incomplete.
For several weeks, we found nothing.
Then the restitution investigation began contacting Bellhaven families.
Hundreds requested testing.
Some discovered expected results.
Others did not.
Marriages cracked.
Old secrets emerged.
Lawsuits multiplied.
Nathan's database proved at least 173 unauthorized substitutions.
The number might eventually exceed 300.
The scandal became national news.
Congressional hearings were announced.
Medical regulators opened investigations.
For the first time, Margaret's obsession was no longer merely destroying one family.
The entire system she exploited was being examined.
Then an investigator in Toronto called me.
They had located the recipient connected to the third embryo.
Her name was Rachel Mercer.
She had carried a girl.
The child was five.
Her name was Emily.
Rachel believed Emily was biologically hers and her late husband's.
DNA testing proved neither was genetically related to Emily.
Rachel agreed to meet.
When I saw Emily, I knew.
She looked like Sophie.
Not identical.
But enough.
Same eyes.
Same tiny crease in the chin.
Same way of tilting her head when confused.
Rachel cried before I did.
“I love her.”
I reached across the table.
“Nobody is taking her from you.”
That mattered.
Biology had caused enough chaos.
Emily had a mother.
Rachel.
I was her genetic mother, but not her parent in the life she understood.
Charles was confirmed as her biological father.
That made Sophie, Lucas, and Emily full genetic siblings.
Three children created from one manipulated fertility cycle.
Three different lives.
One secret.
Rachel decided Emily should gradually know Sophie and Lucas as family friends first.
Someday, when all three were older, they could understand the truth carefully.
No dramatic custody battle.
No adults using DNA to claim ownership.
For once, we chose the children instead of the secret.
Margaret hated that.
During a court appearance, she requested to speak with me.
I refused.
She sent a message through her attorney.
The third child was never part of my plan.
I stared at the sentence.
If Margaret had planned Sophie and Lucas but not Emily, someone else had transferred the third embryo.
Nathan claimed it wasn't him.
Nicholas denied it.
Diane had no access.
Gloria did not work in embryology at the time.
Then who?
We returned to Bellhaven's security archives.
One video survived from the night the third embryo disappeared.
A person entered storage using Margaret's code.
The camera caught only the back of a coat.
Then the person turned.
Charles.
My breath stopped.
Charles stared at the screen.
“That isn't possible.”
But unlike Rebecca's look-alike mystery, there was no twin.
No obvious explanation.
May you like
The timestamp showed Charles inside Bellhaven six years earlier.
And Charles claimed he had never been there.
