Chapter 9 - The Second Infant
I remembered one baby.
Edward.
My goal was to understand why the hospital archive listed two.
St. Matthew’s had microfilm from the maternity ward.
Patient: Margaret Brooks.
Delivery: twin males.
Infant A: living.
Infant B: transferred.
I stared at the screen.
“No.”
I had been heavily sedated after emergency complications.
Frank told me one child survived.
He said the second heartbeat doctors detected late in labor had been a monitoring error.
The record proved otherwise.
There had been twins.
Why was Infant B transferred?
The destination line was sealed by court order.
Attorney listed: Gabriella Ruiz.
She looked devastated.
Then memory returned to her.
Not full memory.
A case.
Early in her career, Frank came to her terrified.
A hospital administrator said one twin had severe complications and required transfer.
Frank signed.
Days later he discovered the transfer paperwork did not match the medical explanation.
He asked Gabriella to investigate quietly.
She found the child had been placed through a private adoption channel.
By then, records were sealed.
Frank made her promise not to tell me until he knew whether the baby was alive.
He never found him.
Gabriella thought Frank eventually told me.
He did not.
Edward sat down.
“So I have a brother.”
“Yes.”
“Alive?”
“We don’t know.”
Then Detective Grant found the destination agency.
Sloan Family Services.
Peter Sloan’s father founded it.
That connected the old adoption to the current property conspiracy.
Peter had known for years that Edward had a twin.
Why would that matter now?
Because Frank’s trust named “all biological sons of Margaret Brooks” as potential beneficiaries.
If the twin was alive, Edward did not control half the warehouse interest.
It was divided.
Linda may have discovered this through Peter.
That could explain why she targeted the trust.
Then Peter requested a plea meeting.
He admitted he knew about the twin.
He said Linda found the sealed adoption index two years earlier.
She asked him to locate the man.
He did.
Name: Michael Lane.
Age thirty-eight.
Chicago.
Occupation: building inspector.
Edward stared at the photograph.
The resemblance was immediate.
Same jaw.
Same eyes.
Different life.
Then Mark’s impersonation made new sense.
Linda had not needed latex and clothing only to make Mark resemble Edward.
She already had access to Edward’s identical twin.
Had Michael participated?
Peter said no.
Linda approached Michael once.
He refused to meet Edward.
Why?
He believed the Brooks family had sold him.
Peter told him Frank received money for the adoption.
Was that true?
Gabriella checked old bank records.
A payment of $50,000 entered Frank’s account three days after the transfer.
Source: Sloan Family Services.
It looked terrible.
Then one line changed everything.
Frank returned the money the next morning.
Memo:
I did not consent to sale.
I thought Frank had hidden a son out of shame—but the bank record proved he tried to reverse a transfer already completed.
May you like
**The twin Linda secretly located was not a willing conspirator, but he possessed one thing Peter feared more than any deed: the original adoption ledger from Sloan Family Services.**
*When Michael finally agreed to meet me, the name he showed me in that ledger connected Linda’s family to mine decades before she ever married Edward.*
