Chapter 7 - The Woman His Father Paid to Disappear)
Margaret Mercer refused to enter the mansion.
"I spent thirty years trying to forget this place."
Christopher stood on the front steps with Cole and Evelyn.
"Your son tried to kill my daughter."
Margaret's expression tightened.
"I know."
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because he's finally doing what I spent my life trying to prevent."
Christopher looked at the wooden box.
"What's inside?"
"The reason Grant hates your family."
She handed it to him.
Christopher opened the lid.
There were photographs.
Letters.
A birth certificate.
The certificate listed Grant's mother as Margaret Hale.
The father line was blank.
Beneath it lay an older handwritten letter.
Margaret watched Christopher read.
"Your grandfather loved me," she said.
Christopher looked up.
"Apparently enough to have a child with you."
"Love and courage are different things."
She looked toward the mansion.
"He had one. Not the other."
Grant had grown up without the Whitmore name.
Christopher's grandfather secretly provided money.
Schooling.
An apartment.
Later, college tuition.
But never acknowledgment.
"Grant found out when he was sixteen," Margaret continued.
"He thought the truth would fix everything."
"It didn't."
"No."
Christopher imagined a teenage boy discovering that one of the most powerful businessmen in the state was his father.
Then being told he still could not use the family name.
"Why did my father hire Grant?"
"Because Thomas felt guilty."
"My father?"
Margaret nodded.
"Thomas was twenty when he discovered Grant existed."
Christopher had known his father as controlled and emotionally distant.
It was difficult to imagine him as a frightened twenty year old trying to repair his father's betrayal.
"He helped Grant finish university. Then gave him work."
"And Grant wanted more."
"Grant wanted what he believed had been stolen."
"The company."
"The family."
Christopher looked at the box.
"Rachel said Grant believed Emma was his."
Margaret's face changed.
"What?"
Christopher watched her closely.
"You didn't know?"
"No."
He told her about the video.
Margaret gripped the railing.
"That isn't possible."
"Why?"
"Because Grant cannot have children."
Silence.
Christopher stared at her.
"What?"
"He was diagnosed when he was twenty nine."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm his mother."
Christopher looked at Cole.
The entire meaning of Rachel's message shifted.
Maybe she had not meant Grant believed he was Emma's biological father.
Maybe something else.
Margaret reached into the wooden box.
"There is one document Grant does not know I kept."
She handed Christopher an old notarized agreement.
It described shares transferred from Christopher's grandfather into a private holding company.
The beneficiary was listed only by initials.
G.M.
Grant Mercer.
Christopher frowned.
"He got shares?"
"For six months."
"What happened?"
"Your grandfather revoked them."
"Why?"
Margaret's expression darkened.
"Because Grant wasn't his son."
Christopher stared at her.
"You just said he was."
"I believed he was."
"What changed?"
"A blood test."
Evelyn stepped closer.
"When?"
"Thirty six years ago."
Christopher calculated.
Grant would have been an infant.
Margaret looked humiliated even after all these years.
"Your grandfather ordered testing privately. The result said Grant could not be his biological child."
"Who was his father?"
"I didn't know."
Christopher studied her.
"You don't believe that test."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because your grandfather continued paying me."
"That proves guilt, not paternity."
"He also kept a copy of Grant's birth certificate in his private safe until he died."
Margaret looked toward the house.
"And because shortly before Thomas died, he called me."
Christopher's pulse quickened.
"What did my father say?"
"He said the original blood test had been falsified."
Evelyn whispered, "By whom?"
Margaret looked at her.
"I don't know."
Cole asked, "Did Thomas?"
"He said he thought he did."
"Who?"
"He never told me."
Christopher clenched his jaw.
"Why not?"
"Because he died two days later."
Another family death following another secret.
Christopher thought of Rachel.
His father.
Now Emma.
Somebody had spent decades protecting something.
"Grant knows about the falsified test?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Thomas asked me not to tell him until he had proof."
"And you obeyed for all these years?"
Margaret's voice broke.
"My son had already become obsessed with the Whitmores. I thought telling him would destroy him."
Christopher looked at the mansion.
"It seems silence did that instead."
Margaret lowered her eyes.
Cole's phone rang.
He answered.
As he listened, his expression tightened.
"What happened?" Christopher asked.
Cole ended the call.
"The lab completed testing on the glass from yesterday."
Christopher already knew about the sedative.
"What else?"
"The medication was mixed with something designed to make Emma nauseated and disoriented."
Margaret covered her mouth.
Cole continued.
"We traced the prescription."
"To Grant?"
"No."
"Juliette?"
"No."
Christopher waited.
"It was prescribed six months ago to someone named Thomas Whitmore."
Christopher stared at him.
"My father has been dead for four years."
"I know."
"Then somebody used his identity."
Cole nodded.
Christopher looked at Evelyn.
"Who still has access to my father's personal information?"
Evelyn's face had gone pale.
"More people than I'd like."
"Names."
"Accountants. Former assistants. Trustees."
Margaret suddenly looked toward the driveway.
"What?"
Christopher asked.
She whispered, "The car."
The black sedan she had arrived in was still parked near the fountain.
Its rear passenger door was open.
She had closed it.
Cole reached for his weapon.
"Stay here."
Officers approached.
The car was empty.
But on the rear seat lay a white envelope.
Margaret began trembling.
"My driver didn't put that there."
Cole opened it carefully.
Inside was a recent photograph.
Rachel.
Christopher stopped breathing.
Not an old photograph.
Rachel's hair was shorter.
She stood beside a newspaper vending machine.
The date on the newspaper was visible.
Six months after Rachel's funeral.
Christopher felt the world tilt.
"That's impossible."
Margaret whispered something.
Christopher turned.
"What did you say?"
She looked at Rachel's photograph.
"I've seen that woman."
Christopher grabbed the railing.
"Where?"
May you like
Margaret looked at him.
"Three months ago."
