Chapter 11 - The Name on the Birth Certificate|
Ethan refused to let me return to my mother's house alone.
I refused to let him make decisions for me.
We compromised by bringing her to a secure apartment arranged by Detective Ruiz. For the first time in years, my mother looked genuinely afraid of the consequences of a secret she had kept.
I placed the photograph's description and the note on the table.
“Who was the third man?”
She stared at the paper.
“His name was Daniel Blackwood.”
Ethan went still.
“My father's younger brother died before I was born.”
“That is what the family told you,” my mother said.
“What actually happened?”
She pressed her palms together.
“Daniel discovered that Richard was stealing money from the family trust. He threatened to expose him. A week later, Daniel disappeared.”
“Was he the man my father treated?” Ethan asked.
“I don't know. Your father never told me the patient's full name.”
I leaned forward.
“Then why did someone leave a note asking who my father really was?”
My mother looked at me with a sadness I had never seen before.
“Because your father was involved in the same case.”
“My father was a doctor.”
“He was also a witness.”
She explained that my father had treated a badly injured man after a late-night accident. The patient had been accompanied by a young woman carrying a baby. The woman claimed the man was her husband, but she had no identification and refused to tell the police his real name.
My father helped them leave the hospital under protection.
“Was the baby me?” I asked.
My mother began to cry.
“No. You weren't born yet.”
“Then who was the child?”
“I never saw the baby again.”
Ethan stood and paced toward the window.
“If Daniel survived, he could have built another identity. He could have become Victor Hale.”
“Or someone could have used Victor's identity to hide him,” Ruiz said.
My phone rang.
It was a number from the hospital.
A nurse spoke quickly.
“Dr. Blackwood, a woman is here asking for you. She says her name is Lydia Shaw. She has documents related to your father's death.”
I exchanged a glance with Ethan.
“Put her in a private room. Don't let her leave.”
Twenty minutes later, Lydia sat across from us. She was in her late fifties and carried a worn leather folder.
“I was your father's office manager,” she said. “He asked me to keep something safe if he died before he could explain it to you.”
She slid a document across the table.
It was a birth certificate.
My name appeared at the top.
Beneath it, the father's name was not the man who had raised me.
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It read:
Daniel Blackwood.
