Chapter 11 - The Price of the Vale Name
The judge ordered Beatrice held pending trial.
Her attorneys requested home confinement.
The request was denied after prosecutors revealed evidence that Dr. Halden had been hidden at the Vale estate.
For the first time in her adult life, Beatrice entered a room she could not control.
Alistair watched officers escort her away.
She did not look back.
Outside the courthouse, reporters shouted questions about Elias Vale, Meridian Relief and the unidentified person whose name began with M.
Alistair made one statement.
“My family’s name protected people who deserved investigation and silenced people who deserved justice. That protection ends today.”
He announced his resignation as chief executive of Vale Meridian.
The board attempted to prevent it.
Alistair threatened to release every private audit in his possession.
His resignation was accepted before sunset.
He used his voting shares to establish a compensation trust for Site 14 workers and families affected by Meridian Relief.
Samuel insisted that the trust be managed independently.
Nellie insisted that her name not be placed on it.
“I don’t want a building named after me,” she said. “I want the people who signed false reports to lose the power to do it again.”
Alistair agreed.
Their relationship changed slowly.
He accompanied her to a mobility clinic, but he waited outside when she asked for privacy.
He offered to purchase a house.
She refused.
He helped her locate an accessible apartment near Samuel’s ambulance station.
She accepted only after signing a lease in her own name.
Samuel continued working.
He avoided interviews and rejected offers from publishers, television producers and political campaigns.
One evening, he allowed Alistair to buy him coffee.
They sat in a nearly empty diner at two in the morning after Samuel finished a long shift.
Alistair asked about Ruth and Daniel Reed.
Samuel told him how Daniel taught him to repair engines and how Ruth left handwritten notes inside his lunchbox until he was seventeen.
“They were good parents,” Alistair said.
“They were.”
“I’m grateful to them.”
Samuel studied him.
“You understand that being my biological father doesn’t replace them.”
“I don’t want to replace them.”
“What do you want?”
“A chance to know you.”
Samuel drank his coffee.
“That answer might be acceptable.”
It was the closest thing to forgiveness Alistair had received.
Nellie and Samuel developed their own rhythm.
They met for breakfast every Sunday.
Sometimes they discussed the investigation.
Sometimes they discussed nothing more important than bad coffee or ambulance traffic.
The first time Samuel called her Mom, it happened accidentally.
He was leaving her apartment and said, “I’ll call you tomorrow, Mom.”
Both of them froze.
Samuel opened the door.
Nellie smiled.
“I’ll answer.”
He left before she could see his eyes filling with tears.
Three months after Beatrice’s arrest, investigators found Dr. Halden in Montreal using a false name.
He was returned to the United States and charged.
Under pressure, he admitted falsifying Sawyer’s death report and coordinating several private infant transfers.
But he refused to identify the person above Beatrice.
“There was no one above her,” he insisted.
Peter Lang disagreed.
So did the financial records.
Payments to Halden came from a trust controlled by an entity called Wintermere Holdings.
Wintermere owned eleven percent of Vale Meridian through a network of private funds.
No public record identified its beneficiary.
Tessa traced its earliest transaction to 1996, two years before Meridian Relief opened the neonatal center.
She brought the discovery to Alistair’s temporary office.
“Someone financed the program before your mother officially created it.”
“Could it be my father?”
“Elias tried to expose it.”
“My mother?”
“She received payments from Wintermere, but she didn’t control the accounts.”
Alistair examined the documents.
Every transfer required approval from an officer identified only as MV.
“M could be anyone,” he said.
“In your family?”
Alistair looked toward an old photograph on the wall.
It showed Elias, Beatrice and a young Alistair standing beside another woman.
The woman was Alistair’s aunt, Margaret Vale.
She had disappeared from public life after Elias’s death.
According to family records, Margaret had died overseas in 2005.
Tessa enlarged the photograph.
On Margaret’s wrist was a bracelet bearing the Wintermere symbol.
Alistair reached for his phone.
Before he could call anyone, Nellie entered carrying a blue folder.
“Samuel found this inside Ruth’s storage unit.”
She placed it on the desk.
Inside was the second hospital bracelet.
Baby B Carter.
May you like
And beneath it was a recent photograph of Margaret Vale.
Alive.
