Chapter 8 - THE MOTHER BEHIND THE GLASS
Rebecca was sixty.
David had imagined this meeting a thousand ways during the drive.
None resembled reality.
Rebecca sat in a sunroom wearing a pale cardigan.
Her dark hair was almost entirely gray.
A nurse brought David and Emily inside.
Rebecca looked at Emily first.
Then at her stomach.
Then at David.
She stopped breathing.
“Thomas?”
David’s heart broke.
“No.”
Rebecca stared.
He sat across from her.
“My name is David.”
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, tears ran down her face.
“My baby.”
David could not speak.
Rebecca reached across the table.
He hesitated only a second.
Then gave her his hand.
She touched his fingers.
His wrist.
His face.
As though checking whether he was real.
“I thought you died.”
“No.”
“They told me…”
Her voice collapsed.
Emily sat beside them quietly.
David finally asked, “Who told you?”
Rebecca’s face changed.
“Eleanor.”
The story came slowly.
Pieces.
Some broken by decades of medication and trauma.
Rebecca had been taken to Halcyon days before David’s birth.
Thomas tried to get her out.
Eleanor intervened.
Rebecca gave birth under sedation.
She woke without her son.
Vance told her the baby had died.
Thomas later discovered the truth.
He found Rebecca months afterward and attempted to free her from Halcyon custody.
Then something happened.
Rebecca became frightened.
“Thomas said they had files,” she whispered.
“What files?”
“Children.”
David leaned closer.
“What children?”
“Families wanted babies.”
Emily felt cold.
“Were the babies kidnapped?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Not always.”
The answer was worse than yes.
Rebecca spoke of desperate pregnant women, wealthy couples, falsified deaths, secret adoptions, manipulated guardianships.
Halcyon had begun decades earlier as a private maternity institution funded by industrial families.
Over time it became a hidden exchange system.
Money.
Influence.
Children.
Inheritance.
Sometimes a baby was placed because the birth mother agreed.
Sometimes consent was coerced.
Sometimes documents were changed.
Sometimes mothers were told their children had died.
David asked, “Did Thomas know?”
Rebecca began crying.
“At first.”
The words cut him.
“He knew?”
“He thought he could control it.”
“Did he participate?”
“Yes.”
David stood.
Emily took his hand.
He pulled away, not from her, but from everything.
Rebecca continued.
“Then you were born.”
David looked at her.
“He changed.”
“He stole me.”
“He tried to protect you.”
“After stealing me.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
No attempt to soften it.
David respected Rebecca for that.
She continued.
“When Thomas realized Eleanor wanted Halcyon, he began collecting evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“A ledger.”
Emily leaned forward.
“What ledger?”
Rebecca looked toward the nurse.
Then whispered:
“The names.”
“Of the children?”
“All of them.”
“Where is it?”
Rebecca stared at David.
“Your father hid it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
David felt hope collapse.
Then Rebecca said:
“But Eleanor does.”
That evening, the DNA results arrived.
Rebecca Hale was David Blackwood’s biological mother.
Thomas Blackwood was his biological father.
Eleanor had raised another woman’s son.
And now David understood why she had always treated love like ownership.
She had built her identity around possessing things that were not hers.
Companies.
Money.
People.
Children.
Emily was quiet on the drive home.
David looked at her.
“You’re thinking about our first baby.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll find out.”
“What if we don’t?”
“We will.”
“David.”
“We will.”
Her eyes filled.
He reached for her hand.
Then his phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph appeared.
A little boy.
Four years old.
Brown hair.
Gray-blue eyes.
The same unusual gray-blue eyes David had inherited from Thomas.
Beneath the photograph was a message.
May you like
You already lost one child.
Do you really want to lose another?
