Chapter 5 - Audrey Sterling
The first letter from Audrey Sterling arrived fourteen months after Declan entered Blackridge.
He almost returned it unopened.
Her name meant nothing to him, although he recognized Sterling Industries. The company manufactured aircraft components, medical systems, and renewable-energy equipment.
The letter was handwritten.
Dear Declan,
You do not know me, but I believe I may have known you before you knew yourself.
I am asking for permission to visit. I will explain everything in person.
Declan assumed she was a journalist or an activist searching for publicity.
Then Investigator Reese asked him to accept the meeting.
“She is not a reporter,” he said.
“Who is she?”
“Someone who has been looking for you for twenty-six years.”
Audrey arrived the following week.
She was elegant but visibly nervous, with dark blond hair and eyes almost identical to Declan’s.
She sat behind the visitation glass and studied his face.
Then she began crying.
Declan remained still.
“My name is Audrey Sterling,” she said. “And I believe I am your biological mother.”
He almost ended the visit.
“Victoria Vale is my biological mother.”
Audrey shook her head.
“No. She is the woman who took you home from St. Matthew’s Hospital.”
Declan gripped the edge of the table.
Audrey explained that twenty-six years earlier, she had given birth prematurely after a highway accident. She had been unconscious for nearly two days.
When she awakened, the hospital told her that her son had died.
No body had been shown to her.
Garrison Sterling, then a young businessman struggling to save his father’s company, had demanded an investigation. Hospital administrators insisted the infant had been cremated due to a clerical error.
Audrey and Garrison spent years searching for the truth.
Recently, a retired nurse had confessed that two newborn identification bands had been switched during a power failure.
One child had died.
The surviving child had been transferred to another room.
A wealthy couple whose newborn had died that same night left the hospital with a living baby.
Charles and Victoria Vale.
“They knew?” Declan asked.
“We do not know when they learned the truth,” Audrey replied. “But medical records show that questions were raised when you were six. That was the same year they adopted Mason.”
Declan remembered that year.
The sudden distance.
The separate bedrooms.
The way Charles stopped calling him his heir.
Perhaps the Vales had discovered he was not biologically theirs. Instead of returning him or telling the truth, they had kept him for appearances while choosing another son to love.
Garrison visited next.
He did not cry.
He placed both hands flat on the table and looked at Declan with controlled intensity.
“I cannot replace the years we lost,” he said. “I will not insult you by pretending blood makes us family. But Audrey and I would like the opportunity to earn that word.”
Declan did not know how to respond.
Garrison continued.
“We are also financing an independent investigation into the crash.”
“Why?”
“Because Reese believes you were framed. And because whether you accept us or not, no son of ours will remain imprisoned for another man’s crime.”
Son.
The word frightened Declan more than Blackridge ever had.
May you like
He wanted to trust them.
That was exactly why he could not.
