Chapter 6 - The Birth Certificate That Shouldn’t Exist
Rebecca accessed Helen’s notary history.
My goal was to prove the surrender fraudulent.
The commission had been issued thirty-five years earlier under another name.
Helen Marlowe.
Not Hayes.
Maya searched public records.
Helen Marlowe had reported a stillbirth at St. Matthew’s Hospital when she was twenty-eight.
No infant name.
No death certificate.
Only a sealed birth record.
Rebecca requested an emergency comparison using the family court petition number.
A clerk sent one page before access was revoked.
It was a birth certificate.
Child: Luke Marlowe.
Mother: Helen Marlowe.
Father: blank.
Luke’s current birth certificate listed Arthur Hayes as his father and the surname Hayes from birth.
Two records existed for the same child.
Helen had altered Luke’s identity.
Dr. Cole looked at the dates.
“Why does this matter to Caroline’s baby?”
Maya found the answer in a trust document attached to Helen’s company filings.
Hayes Family Holdings would transfer its controlling assets to the first biological grandchild of Arthur Hayes.
If Luke was not Arthur’s biological son, my child would not qualify.
Unless the father was someone else.
My stomach tightened.
I had believed Helen hated my baby.
The trust suggested she desperately needed the baby to be biologically connected to Arthur Hayes.
Rebecca asked the obvious question.
“Is Luke the father?”
I could barely speak.
“He’s my husband.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
A nurse entered with a portable ultrasound machine. Dr. Cole performed another scan, then frowned at the chart.
“Caroline, your original blood type is listed as O-positive.”
“It is.”
“The hospital database now lists you as AB-negative.”
Medical records had been changed.
Maya cross-checked the prenatal paternity screen Dr. Ward had ordered without explaining.
The results were missing, but a genetic billing note remained.
PATERNAL MATCH: HAYES LINE CONFIRMED.
Not Luke confirmed.
Hayes line.
Rebecca whispered, “Someone tested your child against another Hayes man.”
Arthur Hayes had died five years earlier.
Or so I had been told.
Maya searched federal death records.
No death certificate existed.
Only an obituary and a cremation invoice paid by Helen.
The crematorium listed no body receipt number.
Then Ben called from a borrowed phone.
He had found Marcus alive in an abandoned storage unit behind the pharmacy. Marcus had escaped with the original photograph.
He also had the envelope Helen received.
Inside was a recent medical laboratory bill.
Patient: Arthur Hayes.
Facility: Greenhaven Long-Term Care.
May you like
I thought my father-in-law was dead—but Helen had hidden him alive while using his DNA to claim my unborn child.
The man in Greenhaven knew who the baby’s real father was, and reaching him meant walking into the trap Helen had built years before.
