Chapter 8 - The Twin Who Knew Rebecca’s Name
Elise arrived at Briarwood Children’s Hospital under federal protection.
Rebecca watched from behind a glass partition as Agent Reed carried the sleeping child into an isolation room across the corridor.
Elise looked exactly like Emma.
The same brown curls.
The same small nose.
The same crescent-shaped scar near the thumb.
Rebecca pressed one hand against the glass.
“How can they have the same scar?”
Dr. Shaw examined the photographs.
“The scars may have been deliberately created as identifiers.”
Rebecca felt nausea rise in her throat.
Someone had marked them.
Like inventory.
Elise woke slowly.
She did not cry.
She sat upright and stared through the glass directly at Rebecca.
Then she raised her hand.
Rebecca entered after the medical team approved contact.
Elise watched her approach.
“Hello,” Rebecca whispered.
The child tilted her head.
“You got older.”
Rebecca froze.
“Do you know me?”
Elise nodded.
“You used to sing when the lights were red.”
Rebecca looked at Agent Reed.
“I have never seen her.”
Elise slid from the bed and touched Rebecca’s face.
“You cried when they took the other baby.”
Rebecca’s knees nearly gave way.
She knelt.
“What other baby?”
“The one in the yellow blanket.”
Rebecca remembered a flash of yellow fabric before anesthesia pulled her under.
“Was that my baby?”
Elise frowned.
“No. You had the red baby.”
“Where is the red baby now?”
Elise pointed toward the floor.
“Under the water.”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
Agent Reed crouched beside them.
“Elise, who told you Rebecca’s name?”
“The teacher.”
“Which teacher?”
“The man with the silver cane.”
Harold used a silver-topped cane after a riding injury.
“Grandpa?” Rebecca asked.
Elise shook her head.
“Not Grandpa. The older man.”
Emma began crying in the room across the hall.
Elise looked toward the sound.
“She woke up.”
The twins had never knowingly met, yet Emma pressed her hand to the glass at the same moment Elise did.
Both children whispered the same word.
“Mirror.”
The hospital brought their beds into one protected room.
When the twins sat together, they communicated through fragments and gestures no adult understood. Emma drew the blue room. Elise added a second door. Emma drew a tree. Elise drew water beneath it.
Rebecca placed the photographs from St. Agnes on the table.
Elise pointed to Evelyn.
“She chooses the mothers.”
She pointed to Harold.
“He chooses the houses.”
Then she pointed to Dr. Voss.
“She teaches the forgetting.”
“What does the older man do?” Agent Reed asked.
Elise selected a black crayon and covered the entire page.
“He owns the song.”
The DNA team continued analyzing records.
Emma and Elise were the biological children of Lillian Cross, the woman listed on Emma’s birth certificate. Lillian had worked as a nurse at St. Agnes and secretly assisted Rebecca’s mother in gathering evidence.
She died after delivering the twins.
But the tests also uncovered something unexpected.
Rebecca had given birth to a child.
Her hospital records had been altered, but traces of the original cord blood remained in storage.
The infant was female.
No death certificate existed.
Rebecca’s biological daughter had been removed alive.
Harold’s financial ledger referred to her as Subject R-1.
Current status unknown.
Rebecca reread those words until they lost meaning.
Emma noticed her tears.
“Are you still my mommy?”
Rebecca pulled her close.
“Always.”
Elise stood beside them uncertainly.
Rebecca opened her other arm.
“You too, if you want me.”
Elise stepped into the embrace.
For the first time, the child cried.
That afternoon, federal agents searched the abandoned St. Agnes hospital. Beneath the burned records wing, they found a flooded basement.
Divers entered after sunset.
They recovered medical equipment, infant bracelets, and three sealed metal containers.
Inside the first were documents.
Inside the second were bones.
Inside the third was a waterproof recording device.
The final recording had been made by Anna Mercer, Rebecca’s mother.
Her voice emerged through static.
“If Rebecca hears this, they have already taken her child.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
Anna continued.
“Do not trust the Vale family. Harold is not the leader. Evelyn is not the leader. They are caretakers for someone who has been searching for the first child for thirty years.”
A loud crash interrupted the recording.
Anna began speaking faster.
“The child carries the only complete index. I hid the key where a mother would never abandon it.”
The recording ended with the sound of a lullaby.
Agent Reed replayed the final sentence.
Where a mother would never abandon it.
Rebecca looked at the twins.
“The key is not inside a building.”
Marcus understood.
“It is inside a child.”
At that moment, Emma began humming.
Elise joined her.
The two melodies were similar but not identical.
When played together, they formed a sequence of numbers.
Coordinates.
May you like
They pointed to a reservoir outside Briarwood.
And the reservoir lay directly behind the cemetery where Rebecca’s mother was buried.
