Chapter 5 - The Boy Margaret Brought Home
Nobody spoke for almost a minute.
Finally Robert whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Emma looked at the laboratory heading.
The test was recent.
Ordered twelve days earlier.
Client: Daniel Hayes.
He had discovered it himself.
Cole read the report.
“The chain of custody looks legitimate.”
Robert shook his head.
“I watched Margaret give birth.”
“You were in the room?”
“No. I was seventeen. I remember her going to the hospital. I remember Charles bringing Daniel home.”
“Did you see Margaret pregnant?”
Robert started to answer.
Then stopped.
Emma saw his certainty weakening.
“Robert?”
“She wore loose clothing.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She said it was a difficult pregnancy.”
“Was there a baby shower?”
“No.”
“Ultrasounds?”
“This was thirty-four years ago.”
Emma stared at the report.
Daniel was thirty-four.
If he was not biologically related to Margaret or Charles, then where had he come from?
And why had Thomas questioned him at age six about his real identity?
The abandoned drive-in stood another twenty minutes away.
Starview had once contained two hundred parking spaces and a towering screen facing the hills.
Now weeds grew through cracked asphalt.
The projection building sagged.
Emma walked slowly toward an old concrete bench beneath the collapsed ticket awning.
“This is where we sat.”
Daniel had told her his first truly vulnerable story here.
Not about his father.
Something else.
A memory he described as a nightmare.
He was four.
A woman was singing.
There were blue curtains.
A red door.
Then someone carried him outside at night.
Daniel said he always woke before seeing the person’s face.
Emma had forgotten.
Now she remembered every detail.
Blue curtains.
Red door.
Robert searched beneath the bench.
Nothing.
Cole examined the concrete.
Emma looked toward the old ticket booth.
A faded number remained painted beside the frame.
17.
The seventeenth parking lane.
“Sequence,” she whispered.
Daniel’s letter.
The key was not metal.
A sequence.
The first place he told her the truth.
Emma walked to lane seventeen.
Each drive-in parking space once had a speaker mounted on a metal pole.
Most were gone.
One remained.
Space 17.
She twisted the speaker housing.
It opened.
Inside was a small digital recorder.
Cole put on gloves.
Emma pressed play.
Daniel’s voice filled the empty theater.
“Emma, if you found this, I’m probably not there to help you.”
Her throat tightened.
“Grandfather is alive. Or he was when I recorded this.”
Robert looked toward the hills.
Daniel continued.
“He told me Margaret and Charles lost their biological son during childbirth.”
Emma covered her mouth.
“They never told anyone. My grandfather knew a private physician who arranged an illegal adoption. Except it wasn’t an adoption.”
Daniel paused.
“They took me.”
Robert swore.
“From who?” Emma whispered.
The recording answered.
“My real mother was named Evelyn Carter.”
Emma’s knees weakened.
Carter.
Her maiden name.
Daniel continued.
“I thought the surname was coincidence until I found her records. Evelyn had a younger brother.”
Emma stopped breathing.
“His name was Michael Carter.”
Her father.
Emma grabbed Robert’s arm.
Daniel’s voice trembled.
“Emma, Evelyn Carter was your father’s sister.”
The recorder almost fell from Emma’s hand.
Daniel was not merely unrelated to Margaret.
He was biologically Emma’s cousin.
Her husband.
The father of her unborn child.
“No.”
She shook her head violently.
“No.”
Cole looked alarmed.
“Emma.”
“No. Daniel would have told me.”
The recording continued.
“There’s more. The birth records were manipulated. I needed independent testing before I told you. Thomas said the records themselves were part of the lie.”
Emma froze.
“Good,” Robert whispered. “So we don’t know.”
Daniel continued.
“He said the Carter connection was manufactured to make me stop searching. He said Margaret had done it before.”
A distant engine roared.
Cole turned.
A black SUV entered the abandoned drive-in.
It accelerated directly toward them.
“MOVE!”
Robert grabbed Emma.
They jumped behind the ticket booth.
The SUV smashed through the bench.
Cole drew his weapon.
The driver reversed.
A rear window opened.
A gunshot cracked across the empty lot.
Robert fell.
Emma screamed.
Blood spread across his shoulder.
The SUV sped away.
Cole called for emergency units.
Emma knelt beside Robert.
Then she noticed something on the shattered concrete where the SUV had struck.
A waterproof tube had been hidden inside the bench.
The impact broke it open.
Inside was another note from Daniel.
May you like
Only four words.
MOTHER KNOWS THE RED DOOR.
