Chapter 3 - Page Thirty-One
The hidden corridor smelled of damp stone and old smoke.
Ethan carried Calvin while Mara guided them with a small flashlight. Lucy moved silently between them, as if she had traveled the passage before. The walls narrowed until Ethan’s shoulders scraped both sides.
“How long has this been here?” he asked.
“Since the first Vale built the house,” Mara said. “The family used it during the war. Later, your father used it for private meetings.”
“With whom?”
Mara did not answer.
Calvin stirred weakly.
“The chapel,” he murmured. “Don’t let Hale reach it.”
Ethan nearly stopped.
“Dr. Hale?”
Calvin’s eyes closed again.
Simon Hale had been the family physician for twenty-five years. He had delivered Ethan. He had signed Daniel Vale’s death certificate. He had just examined Margaret and accompanied her ambulance to the hospital.
Ethan felt cold.
“What does Hale have to do with this?”
Mara’s flashlight shook.
“More than your mother ever admitted.”
The passage opened behind the mansion’s private chapel. Ethan pushed through a stone panel and entered the candleless sanctuary. Rain hammered the stained-glass windows. At the altar stood a marble angel with one hand over its eyes.
Ethan laid Calvin on a pew.
“Where are the records?”
Mara walked to the angel and pressed a carving at its base. A section of the altar floor released with a click.
Beneath it was a steel safe.
Ethan stared at her.
“You knew.”
“I knew where they were. I did not know what was inside.”
“Open it.”
“I don’t have the key.”
Lucy stepped forward.
“Yes, you do.”
She reached into the hem of her white dress and pulled out a narrow brass key.
Mara’s face changed.
“Where did you get that?”
“The woman gave it to me.”
“Why?”
“She said Ethan had to see the names before his mother woke up.”
Ethan took the key.
It opened the safe.
Inside lay a leather ledger, several reels of film, a box of photographs, and a white envelope bearing Ethan’s name in his mother’s handwriting.
He reached for the envelope first.
Mara stopped him.
“Calvin said page thirty-one.”
Ethan opened the ledger.
The early pages listed births at Saint Mercy Clinic, a private maternity hospital once funded by Vale Industries. Dates, mothers’ names, infants’ weights, attending physicians.
Page thirty-one had been partly burned.
Two entries remained legible.
Margaret Vale. Male child. Ethan Daniel Vale.
And beneath it:
Unknown female. Female child. No legal name assigned.
The attending physician for both births was Simon Hale.
In the margin, written in Daniel Vale’s handwriting, were six words.
ONLY ONE HEIR CAN BE ACKNOWLEDGED.
Ethan felt sick.
Lucy peered at the page.
“Is that me?”
“The date is thirty-four years ago,” Ethan said. “You’re ten.”
“Then it’s my mother.”
Mara sank into a pew.
Ethan turned to her.
“Tell me everything.”
Tears shone in Mara’s eyes.
“Your mother gave birth during a blackout. There were complications. Dr. Hale said only one child survived.”
“One?”
“Your mother always believed she had heard two babies crying.”
Ethan looked at the second entry.
“Twins?”
“No. Not hers. Another woman gave birth the same night.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. The records were sealed. Your father paid everyone.”
Lucy touched the burned page.
“The woman in white said Margaret took her baby.”
A noise came from the confessional.
Ethan closed the ledger.
The door swung open.
Simon Hale stepped out holding a pistol.
His raincoat was wet. There was no ambulance outside, no explanation for how he had returned so quickly.
“Put the ledger down,” he said.
Mara stood between him and Lucy.
“Simon, don’t.”
Hale’s eyes moved to the child.
“You should never have brought her here.”
“You know her?” Ethan asked.
“I know what she represents.”
“Who attacked my mother?”
Hale’s jaw tightened.
“Your mother arranged her own disappearance once before. She may have done it again.”
“I found her tied and bleeding.”
“Margaret is capable of injuring herself to control a narrative.”
Ethan opened the envelope addressed to him without taking his eyes off Hale.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed Daniel Vale standing beside a woman in a white dress. She held two infants.
On the back, Margaret had written:
Ethan, one of these babies became you. The other became the reason your father died.
Hale raised the pistol.
“Give me the photograph.”
A shot exploded.
Mara jerked backward.
For a second, Ethan thought Hale had fired.
Then Hale looked down at the blood blooming across his own shoulder.
Behind him, in the hidden doorway, stood the unknown woman in white.
She held a suppressed handgun.
Her face was partly hidden by a veil, but Ethan saw the scar running from her left eye to her jaw.
May you like
She smiled at him.
“Hello, brother.”
