Chapter 9 - THE DNA REPORT
Ellen sat down before I finished telling her.
That frightened me.
“You knew about the test.”
It wasn’t a question.
She nodded.
“When?”
“Six weeks before the wedding.”
“Why was Michael tested?”
“He wasn’t.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“The sample was from something he left here.”
My skin went cold.
“A drinking glass?”
“His toothbrush.”
“Ellen.”
“I thought something was wrong.”
“With what?”
“The hospital records.”
1998 again.
The old medical file.
The blood type discrepancy.
The settlement.
“The hospital called me last year.”
I stared at her.
“After twenty-seven years?”
“A former administrator was reviewing archived pediatric files.”
She folded her hands tightly.
“There had been more than one mistake that year.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“Identification errors.”
I stopped moving.
Ellen’s eyes filled.
“At first, I thought it meant records had been mixed.”
“And then?”
“They told me there had been an investigation involving two newborn boys in 1994.”
Michael’s birth year.
I felt the room tilt.
“No.”
“I ordered the test because I needed to know.”
I could barely speak.
“And?”
Ellen looked at me with a grief I had never seen before.
“Michael is our biological son.”
Air returned to my lungs.
I closed my eyes.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
“Then why hide the report?”
“Because it found something else.”
She stood and walked upstairs.
When she returned, she carried a sealed plastic folder.
Inside was another report.
Michael’s DNA confirmation.
And attached to it was a handwritten letter from a woman named Deborah Lane.
I had never heard the name.
Ellen handed it to me.
Deborah had given birth at St. Joseph’s on the same day Michael was born.
Her baby boy died two days later.
Except according to recently recovered hospital files, Deborah had spent three decades believing the wrong child had died.
“What does this mean?”
Ellen’s voice shook.
“The hospital switched identification bracelets for several hours.”
“But Michael is ours.”
“Yes.”
“Then Deborah’s child—”
“Was returned to her.”
“Before he died.”
Ellen nodded.
“So why contact you?”
“Because Deborah doesn’t believe her son died.”
I stared at the letter.
“She thinks the hospital covered something up.”
The old settlement suddenly made sense in a different way.
Not just a bloodwork mistake.
A hospital hiding a larger scandal.
“Does Michael know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then why did Cassandra want the report?”
“I don’t know.”
My phone rang.
Detective Benton.
Aaron Pike had finished his first interview.
Cassandra had hired him because she believed the report proved Michael wasn’t my biological son.
Apparently, she had planned for months to use that information if Michael’s inheritance was ever threatened.
I almost laughed at the irony.
The document she had committed crimes to steal proved the exact opposite.
Michael was my son.
Completely.
Biologically.
Legally.
Painfully.
But Detective Benton wasn’t finished.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“Pike says Cassandra wasn’t the person who first told him about the DNA test.”
“Who was?”
“A woman named Deborah Lane.”
I looked at Ellen.
She saw the answer on my face.
The woman who believed the hospital had stolen her baby had somehow found our daughter-in-law.
May you like
And suddenly, a family betrayal became connected to a secret buried for thirty-two years.
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