Chapter 7 - Bloodline.
The second bang upstairs was followed by the splintering crack of wood.
David switched off the basement light.
Everyone stood in darkness.
Footsteps crossed the clinic lobby above them.
More than one person had entered.
Miriam whispered that an old service tunnel ran behind the records room, but its entrance had been sealed years ago.
Ethan used a metal chair to smash through the rotting drywall where she pointed.
Claire crawled first, wedding lace dragging through dust and broken plaster.
Margaret followed without complaint.
Behind them, the records-room door shook under a heavy impact.
David shoved Ethan through the opening and climbed in last.
They moved single file through a narrow concrete passage while voices echoed from the basement.
"They know exactly where we're going," David said.
Miriam stopped.
"Then someone here is telling them."
The accusation hung in the darkness.
Margaret immediately looked at David.
David laughed bitterly.
"Of course you think it's me."
"You spent twenty-three years lying to my daughter."
"I spent twenty-three years keeping her alive."
Claire turned between them.
"Both of you stop."
Her voice was quiet but absolute.
For the first time, Margaret obeyed Claire without argument.
The tunnel ended behind a rusted maintenance hatch near a wooded drainage ditch.
They climbed outside into cold evening rain.
A black SUV sat near the clinic fence with its headlights off.
Ethan pulled Claire down behind the ditch before anyone inside could see them.
Miriam pointed toward a narrow trail leading to an old caretaker's cottage.
They ran.
Inside the cottage, Ethan locked the door and spread his file across a kitchen table.
"Tell me about my biological mother."
Miriam sat opposite him.
"Her name was Rebecca Vale."
Margaret's expression showed confusion before recognition.
"Rebecca?"
She remembered a girl who appeared at family gatherings when Margaret was a child.
Charles had called Rebecca the daughter of a distant cousin.
In reality, Rebecca was Charles Vale's illegitimate child.
"My half-sister," Margaret whispered.
Miriam nodded.
Rebecca became pregnant at nineteen.
Charles saw the pregnancy as a chance to preserve his bloodline while controlling Margaret after Claire's disappearance.
He arranged for Rebecca's child to be adopted by Margaret without either woman learning their true relationship.
Ethan looked physically ill.
"What happened to Rebecca?"
Miriam's silence was long.
"She is alive."
Ethan's head snapped up.
"Where?"
"I don't know."
Miriam explained that Rebecca tried to reclaim Ethan when he was two years old.
Charles had her committed to a private psychiatric institution under another name.
Margaret stood abruptly.
"My father told me a woman tried to kidnap Ethan from the park."
Miriam nodded.
"That was Rebecca."
Ethan stared at Margaret.
"You had my mother arrested?"
"I thought she was a stranger."
"You never asked why she was screaming that I was her son?"
Margaret had no defense.
Claire reached for Ethan, but he stepped away from everyone.
His identity had become a series of documents written by people who never asked what he wanted.
Outside, an engine started.
The black SUV was moving toward the cottage.
David looked through the curtain.
"We have thirty seconds."
Miriam grabbed Ethan's file and tore out a small photograph taped beneath the back cover.
It showed a young blonde woman holding a toddler Ethan in a public park.
On the back was a handwritten name.
REBECCA VALE - ST. AGNES HOUSE, WARD C.
Ethan stared at the address beneath it.
May you like
The institution was still operating.
Then the front window exploded inward.
