Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO DIED TWICE
My mother did not answer immediately.
That hurt more than if she had lied.
She stood three feet away from me.
Alive.
Breathing.
Looking older than every photograph I remembered.
Her hair was darker than mine but streaked heavily with gray.
The scar along her jaw disappeared beneath the collar of a black sweater.
Her eyes were exactly the same.
Green.
Mine.
For nineteen years, I had searched for those eyes in crowds without realizing I was doing it.
Now I wanted to look away.
“Grace.”
She reached for me.
I stepped back.
My mother stopped.
Ivy stirred.
Marianne’s gaze dropped.
Her face crumpled.
“Is that…”
“My daughter.”
Tears filled her eyes instantly.
I hated that they affected me.
I hated that part of me wanted to put Ivy in her arms.
I hated that another part wanted to scream until the building shook.
“You knew I was pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“You watched me?”
“From a distance.”
“That seems to be everyone’s favorite way to love me.”
Luka lowered his head.
My mother absorbed the insult.
She deserved it.
“Grace, I know nothing I say can—”
“You let me think you were dead.”
“Yes.”
“You let me go to your funeral.”
Her eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“I put flowers on an empty grave.”
“It wasn’t empty.”
I stared.
“What?”
“My wedding dress was inside.”
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the insanity of the detail broke something in me.
“You buried a dress?”
“And a box of letters.”
“While I buried my mother.”
She flinched.
Good.
I wanted her to.
Then guilt hit me for wanting it.
I held Ivy tighter.
My mother noticed.
“Sit down.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“You just gave birth.”
“So everyone keeps reminding me.”
“Grace.”
Her voice changed.
Not authoritarian.
Familiar.
The same tone she had used when I was little and frightened.
My body betrayed me.
My eyes filled.
I sat.
She did not come closer.
Luka closed the steel door.
Then checked a small monitor beside it.
“Did you come alone?”
Marianne looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Tracked?”
“I changed vehicles twice.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I received the trigger.”
“What trigger?”
She looked at me.
“The birth registry.”
My stomach turned.
“Luka’s signature.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“So that’s why you signed.”
He nodded.
“Partly.”
“Partly?”
Marianne sat across from me.
“Luka’s name entered into a Halcyon birth registry was the alarm we created eighteen years ago.”
I stared.
“You created an alarm using the name of a legally dead man.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Charles monitored everything connected to you.”
She folded her hands tightly.
“If Luka ever had to publicly use his real name around you, it meant the cover was already blown.”
I looked at the walls.
At the files.
At photographs.
At decades of fear organized into boxes.
“Start at the beginning.”
My mother inhaled slowly.
“The beginning depends on whose story you believe.”
“I want yours.”
She looked at Luka.
He moved farther away.
Giving us space.
My mother began.
“Twenty-six years ago, I worked at St. Anne’s.”
The name made my skin crawl.
“I was not a doctor.”
“I thought you were a research nurse.”
“I was.”
She nodded.
“Clinical genetics.”
“Under Halcyon?”
“Before it was called Halcyon.”
She looked at the old photograph.
“Charles Holloway was expanding a private fertility program.”
“My father-in-law.”
“Yes.”
“Evan’s father.”
“Yes.”
I swallowed.
“And M-17?”
Her fingers tightened.
“M-17 was not a patient.”
I frowned.
“Then what was it?”
“A storage designation.”
Luka looked away.
My mother continued.
“Moretti Batch Seventeen.”
The room seemed smaller.
“Matteo?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Originally, it referred to biological material collected from the Moretti family.”
Luka spoke.
“My father had leukemia.”
Marianne nodded.
“Antonio Moretti participated in an experimental cell-storage program.”
I looked at Luka.
“He was sick?”
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
My mother continued.
“The program required blood, marrow, and reproductive tissue from certain relatives to study hereditary compatibility.”
I felt sick.
“Children?”
“Some participants were minors.”
“That’s legal?”
“Parts of the study were.”
Her eyes hardened.
“What Charles did with the material was not.”
I waited.
“He realized wealthy clients would pay extraordinary amounts for access to carefully screened donor genetics.”
My stomach turned.
“He sold people?”
“He sold access to their reproductive material.”
I looked down at Ivy.
My mother’s voice broke.
“At first, we thought it was isolated.”
“Who is we?”
“Your father.”
I looked up sharply.
“Dad worked there?”
“Not at first.”
She smiled sadly.
“Thomas was an auditor.”
Of course he was.
My father loved numbers.
Order.
Receipts.
He had taught me to balance a checkbook when I was nine.
“He found payments that didn’t belong.”
“What payments?”
“Private transfers.”
“From who?”
“Families who wanted specific donors.”
The idea made my skin crawl.
“So M-17 was a catalog?”
“Partly.”
“Why seventeen?”
“Because there were sixteen other donor lines before the Moretti material entered the system.”
I stared at her.
“Sixteen.”
“At least.”
Luka’s voice was flat.
“The full number is higher.”
I looked at him.
“How high?”
“We don’t know.”
My mother’s face tightened.
“That is what we were trying to prove.”
I shifted Ivy.
My body ached.
“Where do you fit in?”
Luka answered.
“My father found out.”
I looked at him.
“How?”
“He overheard Charles discussing a payment.”
“At thirteen?”
“I was good at being where adults didn’t want me.”
He gave a cold smile.
“My father confronted him.”
My mother looked at the photograph.
“Three days later, Antonio died.”
I stared.
“From leukemia?”
Luka’s jaw flexed.
“That’s what the certificate said.”
My mother continued.
“We found evidence his medication had been altered.”
My breath caught.
“Charles killed him?”
“We could never prove it.”
“Then what happened?”
Luka looked toward the photograph.
“I broke into the lab.”
My mother closed her eyes.
“He found the M-series ledger.”
“I copied pages.”
“You were thirteen.”
“I was angry.”
His voice was empty.
“That makes children do stupid things.”
“What did Charles do?”
Luka looked at me.
“He tried to erase the mistake.”
A chill moved through me.
“You.”
“Yes.”
My mother took over.
“There was a fire.”
“The night you killed him.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Yes.”
I waited.
She took a breath.
“Charles arranged an electrical fire in a storage annex.”
Luka’s face went blank in the way faces sometimes do when memories are too sharp.
“I was locked inside.”
My chest tightened.
“How did you get out?”
“Your mother.”
I looked at her.
“I had followed Charles.”
Her hand touched the scar on her jaw.
“I pulled Luka out through a service hatch.”
“Then you declared him dead.”
“We had no choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“Yes.”
She nodded slowly.
“There is.”
Pain filled her face.
“And sometimes every choice is terrible.”
She explained.
A second unidentified body had been recovered from the fire.
A transient worker.
Badly burned.
No family.
No identification.
Marianne switched the temporary case labels.
She used Luka’s dental file.
She helped create a death certificate.
I stared at her.
“You committed fraud.”
“Yes.”
“You stole someone’s identity in death.”
“Yes.”
“You let another family wonder what happened to him.”
Her face collapsed.
“There was no family we could find.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No.”
She did not defend herself.
That made it harder to stay furious.
Luka spoke.
“She saved my life.”
I looked at him.
“And destroyed part of someone else’s truth.”
“Yes.”
He met my eyes.
“Both things can be true.”
I hated that he was right.
I looked back at my mother.
“What happened to you?”
“I became evidence.”
“Meaning?”
“Charles discovered I knew.”
“And Dad?”
“He helped me copy financial records.”
“Why didn’t you go to police?”
“We did.”
My anger paused.
“What?”
“We brought evidence to a federal investigator.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared.”
Luka’s voice hardened.
“Two weeks later, his body was found in another state.”
I felt cold.
My mother continued.
“After that, we stopped trusting normal channels.”
I looked around the room.
“So you built this.”
“Yes.”
“And then you had me.”
Her face softened.
“You were already on the way.”
I stared.
“You were pregnant while all this happened?”
“Yes.”
“How could you stay?”
“I tried to leave.”
“What stopped you?”
“Charles.”
Of course.
“He had leverage.”
“What leverage?”
She looked at Luka.
Then back at me.
“Your father.”
My heart tightened.
“He threatened Dad?”
“He had Thomas arrested.”
“For what?”
“Fraud he didn’t commit.”
I remembered almost nothing of that.
I was not born yet.
“Charles offered a deal.”
“What deal?”
“We stop investigating.”
“And?”
“Thomas keeps his freedom.”
She looked down.
“And Charles keeps M-17.”
I hated him without ever having known the real man.
“You agreed.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Six years.”
Until my mother died.
Or pretended to.
My breath caught.
“What changed when I was six?”
Marianne went very still.
“Charles learned I had kept copies.”
“How?”
“I trusted the wrong person.”
“Who?”
Her lips pressed together.
“Dr. Elaine Mercer.”
I frowned.
“Sloane’s mother?”
“Yes.”
The connection snapped into place.
Sloane.
The genetics program.
Her mother.
My husband.
Nothing was random.
“Elaine told Charles?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He sent someone to our house.”
I felt the old terror inside her voice.
“Your father got you out through the back.”
I remembered.
Not clearly.
Rain.
My father carrying me.
A suitcase.
A woman screaming downstairs.
For nineteen years I had believed those were pieces of a nightmare.
Maybe they were memory.
My mother touched her scar.
“I survived.”
“What did they do to you?”
She looked away.
“Enough.”
I waited.
She did not elaborate.
For once, I did not push.
“Why fake your death?”
“Because they thought I had died.”
“You let them.”
“Yes.”
“And Dad?”
“He knew.”
My eyes burned.
“Everyone knew except me.”
“Grace.”
“I was the child.”
“Yes.”
“I was the one who woke up crying.”
Her face broke.
“I know.”
“I was the one who forgot what your voice sounded like.”
She covered her mouth.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
My voice rose.
“You watched me grow up.”
“Yes.”
“You watched Dad raise me alone.”
“Yes.”
“You watched me marry Evan.”
Her face changed.
That was different.
I saw it.
“You knew.”
She went silent.
I stood too fast.
Pain tore through me.
Luka moved toward me.
I shoved his hand away.
“You knew who Evan was.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Before the wedding.”
My stomach turned.
“You let me marry him.”
“I tried to stop it.”
“How?”
“I sent Thomas proof.”
“Proof of what?”
“That Charles had placed Evan near you deliberately.”
The sentence landed like ice.
“What?”
Luka went still.
Even he seemed surprised by the directness.
My mother reached for a box beside her.
She removed an envelope.
She placed it on the table.
I did not touch it.
“What do you mean deliberately?”
“Evan met you at the university library.”
“Yes.”
“He told you he had never been there before.”
I remembered laughing about it.
He had spilled coffee on my economics textbook.
Bought me another one.
Asked me to dinner.
My mother’s eyes filled.
“He had been watching you for three months.”
My skin prickled.
“No.”
“He was sent to find out whether Thomas had given you anything.”
“No.”
“Grace—”
“No.”
The room felt too small.
My marriage had already been destroyed once that day.
Now she was telling me it had never begun honestly.
“Evan loved me.”
My mother’s expression became unbearably gentle.
“Maybe he did eventually.”
I hated her for saying it that way.
“Eventually?”
“He was working for Charles when he approached you.”
I looked at Luka.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
My mother nodded.
“I didn’t tell him.”
“Why?”
“Because Luka wanted Evan dead.”
Luka’s eyes hardened.
“I wanted Charles stopped.”
“You said his son was the shortest road.”
Marianne looked at me.
“I refused.”
I stared between them.
These people had been discussing my husband before I even knew Luka existed.
My life had been a room full of hidden conversations.
I looked at the envelope on the table.
“What is that?”
“Your father’s last letter.”
My breath stopped.
“He left me a letter?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t I get it?”
“Because Evan took it.”
My gaze snapped toward her.
“He what?”
“He removed it from Thomas’s safe after the funeral.”
“How do you know?”
“Security footage.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because the letter named M-17.”
I felt dizzy.
My father had died three years earlier.
A heart attack.
At home.
Evan had been the one who found him.
I had thought that was a mercy.
I could barely speak.
“Did Evan kill my father?”
My mother’s face changed.
“I don’t know.”
The relief and terror arrived together.
“You said his death wasn’t a heart attack.”
“I said the story you were told is incomplete.”
“What happened?”
My mother looked at Luka.
He crossed the room.
Opened a metal cabinet.
Removed a medical report.
He set it in front of me.
I read the heading.
THOMAS VALE — TOXICOLOGY REVIEW.
My hands began shaking.
There was a substance listed.
Digoxin.
A medication my father did not take.
I looked up.
“What is this?”
“Your father had a cardiac condition.”
Marianne spoke carefully.
“A large dose of digoxin could trigger a fatal arrhythmia.”
I stopped breathing.
“Someone poisoned him.”
“We believe so.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
“You just said Evan took his letter.”
“Yes.”
“That means Evan was there.”
“Yes.”
I could barely form the question.
“Was Sloane?”
My mother’s silence told me enough.
I covered my mouth.
My father.
My husband.
My doctor.
My mother.
My baby.
All of them tied to the same secret.
A sound came from the hallway monitor.
Luka turned sharply.
One red light blinked.
Then another.
“Movement downstairs.”
My mother stood.
“They found us?”
“Maybe.”
She went to the wall of names.
Pressed behind a frame.
A panel opened.
Inside were three drives.
She took one.
Handed it to me.
“If we get separated, you keep this.”
“What is it?”
“The first half of M-17.”
I stared.
“First half?”
“The financial ledger.”
“And the second?”
“Genetic identities.”
“Where is it?”
Her eyes moved to Ivy.
I felt cold.
“No.”
“Grace.”
“Where is it?”
“Your father hid it.”
“Where?”
She looked at my wedding ring.
My blood turned to ice.
The microchip.
“The ring?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“The ring opens the place where he hid it.”
“Where?”
Before she could answer, the building alarm screamed.
Luka drew a handgun from behind his back.
I stared.
“You said no scenes in front of the baby.”
“This isn’t a scene.”
He checked the monitor.
Three figures entered the lower hallway.
Then five.
My mother grabbed a backpack.
“We leave through the north stairwell.”
I looked at the screen.
One figure moved into view.
Silver hair.
Charles Holloway.
He looked directly up at the security camera.
Then smiled.
He raised a phone.
My mother’s phone rang.
She stared at it.
Nobody moved.
It rang again.
Luka said, “Don’t.”
She answered.
Charles’s voice came through the speaker.
Calm.
Almost warm.
“Marianne.”
My mother’s face emptied.
“It has been a long time.”
She said nothing.
Charles continued.
“I’m glad Grace finally found you.”
I looked at her.
My blood ran cold.
He knew I was here.
He knew Ivy was here.
He had let us lead him directly to Room 417.
Charles’s voice softened.
“Now give me my granddaughter.”
My mother’s eyes snapped to mine.
I held Ivy tighter.
Charles laughed quietly.
“Oh, Grace.”
He could hear us.
“Did no one tell you?”
I stared at the phone.
May you like
His next words changed everything.
“Evan is not the only Holloway whose DNA was used without permission.”
