Chapter 10 - AVA’S FIRST NAME
Ava had always believed her past began at Saint Agnes Home for Children.
She knew she had been abandoned as an infant, adopted by the Bennett family at age four, and raised in a loving home far from Bellmere. The orphanage records listed her birth name as Ava Marie, parents unknown.
The address Adrian provided led not to the orphanage itself but to a storage facility that had preserved Saint Agnes records after the institution closed.
Ava, Ethan, Lena, and E arrived after midnight. E wore a cap and medical mask to avoid recognition. He remained suspicious of every camera, every passing car, every locked door.
The facility manager led them to a box marked 1998 INTAKES.
Ava opened it with numb fingers.
Her file contained three pages.
The first was familiar: estimated date of birth, no known parents, transferred by county services.
The second was a medical intake form.
Ava’s blood type had been altered in blue ink.
The third was a photograph.
A little girl stood beside a hospital bed, staring at the camera. Her hair had been cut short. A circular electrode mark was visible at her temple.
Behind her, on the wall, was the label A.K.
Ethan looked from the photograph to Ava. “That bed was yours.”
Ava could not speak.
Lena found an envelope attached to the back of the file. Inside was a letter from Miriam.
To the person who finds Ava,
Her name is not Ava Kessler, though that is what Silas called her. She is not his daughter. She was taken from a young nurse who died during childbirth at Saint Orison. Jonathan approved the adoption because the child’s blood markers matched those needed for the twin study. She lived in the underground ward for four years. When I removed her, Margaret helped me falsify the transfer to Saint Agnes.
I believed distance would protect her.
I was wrong.
Ava lowered the letter.
The room blurred.
Ethan reached for her, but she pulled away, not from him but from every person connected to the house.
“I was there,” she said. “I was the third child.”
E shook his head. “I remember a boy.”
“You remember what they taught you to remember.”
Lena turned the photograph over. A handwritten note read: SUBJECT A DISPLAYS SUPERIOR RETENTION. DO NOT CONDITION WITH GENDERED LANGUAGE.
Ethan’s face twisted with disgust. “They made you part of the identity trials.”
Ava looked at her legs. “My accident did not begin this. It brought me back.”
A memory surfaced without warning.
A white room.
Two boys behind glass.
A man asking her which one cried first.
A woman with pearl earrings telling her to forget.
Ava pressed both hands to her head.
“I saw them,” she whispered. “I saw the tags.”
Ethan knelt before her. “Can you remember which one was taken?”
“I remember red thread on one wrist. Blue on the other.”
E pulled a faded blue ribbon from inside his shirt. “I woke with this in my hand the night Mother moved me back to the cellar.”
Miriam’s key had been tied to a blue ribbon.
Ava stared at it. Another memory opened.
Margaret standing over two bassinets.
Ava, four years old, hidden beneath a table.
Jonathan saying, “Red goes upstairs. Blue disappears.”
Then Silas Kessler switching the ribbons while Jonathan turned away.
Ava gasped.
“The ribbons were changed.”
“By Kessler?” Lena asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I do not know.”
The facility lights flickered.
E stepped toward the door. “Someone is here.”
A phone rang inside the records box.
It was an old black handset with no visible connection.
Ava answered.
Margaret’s voice said, “You remember more quickly than Silas predicted.”
“You knew who I was.”
“From the moment Ethan brought you home.”
“Is that why you tried to kill me?”
“No. I tried to kill you because you began remembering.”
Ava’s voice shook with fury. “You helped Miriam get me out.”
“I was weaker then.”
“You were human then.”
Margaret was silent.
Ava asked, “Why force me to sign the shares away?”
“Because Jonathan’s succession contract requires the witness to certify the heir. Your signature on the final page would make the decision irreversible.”
“I will never sign.”
“You already did.”
Ava looked down.
On the table lay the legal agreement from Blackwood House.
The signature line now carried her name.
It was perfect.
Ethan whispered, “That is not her signature.”
Ava remembered the photographs of copied signatures beneath the house.
E had been trained to imitate Ethan.
Someone else had been trained to imitate her.
Margaret said, “Come home before sunrise, Ava. Or the forged signature becomes the only truth the law will ever see.”
May you like
The line disconnected.
Then the storage facility doors locked, and gasoline began pouring beneath them.
