Chapter 2 - The Girl Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Damien did not speak for almost a full minute.
Neither did I.
The bathroom filled with the soft hum of the ventilation system and the faint sound of water dripping from the showerhead. I was still on the marble floor, one hand pressed against my mouth, while the man I had spent twenty years mourning stared at me from a wheelchair.
“Our daughter,” he finally said.
The words sounded unfamiliar in his voice.
I nodded.
He looked away.
“How far along were you when you found out?”
“Three months after you disappeared.”
“And you tried to contact me?”
“I tried everything.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“My phone was disconnected. The address you gave me was empty. I went to the cottage near the lake and found the locks changed. I even called the number your friend Marcus had once used.”
Damien’s jaw tightened.
“Marcus worked for my father.”
“I know that now.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
There was enough darkness in his tone that I stopped.
Margaret knocked from outside.
“Mr. Bennett?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
I looked at him.
“You’re not.”
“Neither are you.”
That was true.
I stood slowly, using the marble vanity for balance.
“I should leave.”
“No.”
“I’m not finishing this bath.”
“I don’t care about the bath.”
“I care.”
My voice cracked. “Because five hours ago, you were a stranger. Ten minutes ago, you were my employer. Now you’re a man I thought was gone, and you’re asking about a baby I buried twenty years ago.”
He flinched.
I immediately hated myself for the phrasing.
“I didn’t bury her,” I whispered. “I never got to.”
That sentence changed him.
“Rachel.”
“I gave birth at St. Agnes Women’s Hospital. She came early. They took her before I heard her cry. My mother was with me. A doctor came in later and said there had been complications.”
“What was the doctor’s name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Think.”
“I was eighteen, Damien. I had been in labor for sixteen hours. I was scared and alone and convinced you had abandoned me.”
He closed his eyes.
“I didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“No, you don’t know what happened.”
He wheeled himself toward the vanity and grabbed a robe from the bench.
I helped him get it around his shoulders without thinking. Muscle memory did not exist between us, but tenderness did. That frightened me more.
“Tell me,” I said.
He stared at his reflection.
“When I left you at the boathouse, I went back to my father’s lake house. I told him I was done pretending to be someone else. I told him about you.”
“You said your name was Eli Hale.”
“Hale was my mother’s maiden name.”
“And Bennett?”
“My father’s kingdom.”
He gave a bitter laugh.
“Victor Bennett did not like discovering his only son wanted a life he had not selected.”
“What did he do?”
“Had me sedated. Put me on a private plane. Sent me to a treatment facility in Switzerland under the story that I was unstable.”
My skin went cold.
“For how long?”
“Eleven months.”
I sat on the closed toilet lid.
“Why didn’t you come back after?”
“I did.”
I looked up.
“The Morgan house was empty. Your mother had moved. The landlord said you left Chicago. Marcus told me you had accepted money from my father and wanted nothing to do with me.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because three years ago I found the payments.”
His hands curled around the arms of his chair.
“My father paid your mother.”
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
“He paid her sixty thousand dollars two weeks after I disappeared. Then another forty thousand the month you gave birth.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
My first instinct was anger.
Then memory arrived.
My mother paying off our apartment.
My mother suddenly buying a used car.
My mother insisting we move to Milwaukee before the baby came.
My mother telling me not to ask questions because “some men are too powerful to fight.”
I had spent years believing she was ashamed of me.
Maybe she had been afraid.
“Why were you looking at old payments?” I asked.
Damien’s expression closed again.
“Because my father died four years ago, and I inherited more than the company.”
“What else?”
“His secrets.”
He moved toward the bedroom.
I followed.
At the desk beside his bed was a black leather folder. Damien opened it and removed a copy of an old bank transfer.
MARLENE MORGAN.
My mother.
$40,000.
The date was two days after my daughter was born.
I sat down hard.
“There’s more,” he said.
He removed a hospital invoice.
ST. AGNES MATERNITY SERVICES.
PAID BY BENNETT FAMILY HOLDINGS.
The date matched my delivery.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I.”
“You knew this before I came here?”
“I found it six weeks ago.”
“Six weeks?”
He nodded.
“And the accident?”
His eyes met mine.
“My car went through a guardrail four days after I requested the archived St. Agnes records.”
The room changed.
“You think someone tried to kill you.”
“I know someone tampered with the steering system.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
I stood.
“You’re telling me your father paid my mother after our baby supposedly died, your company paid the hospital, and then somebody tried to kill you for asking questions?”
“Yes.”
A laugh came out of me. Not because anything was funny.
“This is insane.”
“It gets worse.”
He pulled another page from the folder.
A typed note from a private investigator.
INFANT FEMALE — MORGAN, RACHEL
NO DEATH CERTIFICATE FOUND IN STATE ARCHIVE.
NO BURIAL RECORD FOUND.
NO CREMATION RECORD FOUND.
I stared at the page.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“No.”
“It could be lost paperwork.”
“Yes.”
“It was twenty years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Stop agreeing with me.”
His face broke.
“I don’t know how else to keep from telling you what I think.”
“What do you think?”
Damien’s eyes filled, and for the first time I understood that he had been carrying this alone.
“I think our daughter may have lived.”
My knees threatened to give out again.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“No.”
“I don’t know that.”
“No.”
“Rachel.”
“My mother watched me cry for months.”
“I know.”
“She held me when my milk came in and there was no baby to feed.”
His eyes closed.
“Jesus.”
“She would not have done that to me.”
“Maybe she believed she was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“My father.”
I looked at the transfer again.
Forty thousand dollars.
Two days after my daughter was born.
“Where is my mother’s money now?”
“Gone. She spent most of it over the next decade.”
“She died seven years ago.”
“I know.”
I glared at him.
“How do you know so much about me?”
His answer was quiet.
“I started looking after the accident.”
“So you investigated me.”
“I looked for you.”
“Same difference.”
“No.”
The sharpness in his voice startled me.
“I woke up in a hospital unable to feel my legs. The first thing the surgeon told me was that I might never walk again. The second thing my lawyer told me was that the St. Agnes archive request had disappeared. I realized somebody was afraid of what I would find.”
He touched the pendant.
“And the only person I ever trusted with this chain was you.”
I looked at it.
“Why do you have it? I gave it back to you the night of the storm.”
He frowned.
“No. You didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
“No.”
We stared at each other.
That tiny disagreement opened another door.
I remembered his hand closing mine around the pendant.
Keep it until I come back.
I remembered wearing it home.
I remembered my mother seeing it the next morning.
Then I remembered waking two days later and finding it gone.
My stomach turned.
“My mother took it.”
Damien whispered, “And somehow my father got it.”
Neither of us spoke.
Margaret appeared at the bedroom doorway with an envelope.
“Mr. Bennett, the investigator delivered this before he left town.”
Damien opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of an adoption ledger.
One line had been highlighted.
BABY GIRL — PRIVATE PLACEMENT
BIRTH DATE: JUNE 14
MOTHER: CONFIDENTIAL
SPONSOR: BENNETT FAMILY TRUST
My daughter’s birthday.
At the far right was a handwritten destination.
ROSEWOOD CHILDREN’S HOME — EVANSTON.
Underneath, one additional note.
PLACED WITH FAMILY. NAME SEALED.
I touched the paper with shaking fingers.
“Damien.”
“I see it.”
“She lived.”
“Maybe.”
“She lived.”
This time I was the one refusing uncertainty.
I stood.
“Take me there.”
“Rachel, it’s nine at night.”
“I don’t care.”
“You have two children at home.”
That stopped me.
Brandon.
Emma.
Reality crashed back into the room.
I grabbed my phone.
Three missed calls from Mrs. Alvarez.
My heart dropped.
I called immediately.
She answered on the first ring.
“Rachel, don’t panic.”
Nobody in history had ever said those words before good news.
“What happened?”
“Brandon’s fever went up again. I took him to County.”
I was already moving.
Damien turned his chair.
“Margaret, get the car.”
“No,” I said.
He looked at me.
“You’re not coming.”
“Yes, I am.”
“You can’t even transfer without help.”
“I own a van designed for this chair.”
“I don’t need a billionaire making my son’s sickness about him.”
His expression went still.
“I’m not.”
“Then why?”
He held my gaze.
“Because twenty years ago, someone made sure you faced the worst night of your life without me.”
May you like
His voice softened.
“I’m not letting you face another one alone.”
