Chapter 18 - THE THIRD EMBRYO
The third embryo changed the investigation.
Police searched Margaret’s home.
Federal financial investigators entered Whitmore Holdings.
Medical regulators reopened Reeves’s clinic records.
And buried inside Margaret’s private office, investigators found a handwritten calendar.
One date was circled.
Eight years earlier.
TRANSFER 3.
Beneath it was a woman’s first name.
Rebecca.
Martin recognized it.
“Rebecca Sloan.”
“Who is she?”
James asked.
Martin looked shaken.
“She worked in the Whitmore household.”
“As what?”
“A nurse during Charles’s illness.”
Police found Rebecca within hours.
She lived three states away.
She agreed to speak by video.
Rebecca appeared on the screen with gray beginning at her temples.
When we mentioned Margaret, she went silent.
Then she said, “I wondered when this would come back.”
My pulse jumped.
“You carried an embryo.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Yes.”
“What happened to the baby?”
She looked confused.
“There was no baby.”
Claire leaned closer.
“You miscarried?”
“No.”
Rebecca shook her head.
“The implantation failed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Reeves told me.”
I looked at James.
We both had the same thought.
Reeves had lied before.
“Did you ever take a pregnancy test?”
“No.”
“Blood test?”
“At the clinic.”
“Did you see the result?”
“No.”
Rebecca’s face changed.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
She covered her mouth.
“I was sick afterward.”
“Sick how?”
“Nausea.”
“Exhaustion.”
“I thought it was hormones.”
“How long?”
“Months.”
The room went silent.
“Rebecca.”
I spoke carefully.
“Did your body change?”
She began crying.
“I gained weight.”
“But I was taking medication.”
“Then what happened?”
She wiped her face.
“I woke up in a private hospital after an emergency procedure.”
“What procedure?”
“They told me I had an ovarian complication.”
“Who was there?”
“Margaret.”
My skin crawled.
“Did you have an incision?”
Rebecca nodded.
“Across my abdomen.”
Claire stood.
“That sounds like a C-section.”
Rebecca looked horrified.
“No.”
Eleanor asked one question.
“Do you remember the date?”
Rebecca gave it.
James immediately searched backward.
His face turned white.
“What?”
I asked.
He showed me his phone.
The date was almost exactly nine months after the supposed embryo transfer.
Rebecca had not suffered a failed implantation.
She had carried a pregnancy without being told.
Then someone had taken the baby.
Rebecca was sobbing now.
“Where is my child?”
Nobody knew.
Then James’s phone rang.
Officer Daniels.
He answered.
She spoke for almost a minute.
James did not move.
Finally he whispered, “Send me the photograph.”
A message arrived.
He opened it.
I saw the image.
A baby.
Wrapped in a white blanket.
Margaret stood beside the hospital bassinet.
On the back of the photograph was a date.
Rebecca’s date.
And a handwritten name.
Not Evan.
Not Lily.
A girl.
Anna.
Officer Daniels spoke through the phone.
“We found school records.”
James looked at me.
“Anna is alive.”
My heart pounded.
“How old is she?”
“Eight.”
“Where is she?”
James looked toward Eleanor.
Then back at me.
“She has been living less than ten miles from us.”
“With whom?”
May you like
His voice barely came out.
“Martin.”
