Chapter 7 - The Man in the Christmas Photograph
Diane emailed the photograph.
It was taken the previous Christmas outside a church in Maine.
An older man stood beneath a wreath wearing a gray wool coat.
Everett enlarged the image.
His face drained.
“That’s my father.”
Richard Brooks had been declared dead after a private cardiac event.
No public viewing.
No autopsy.
Eleanor arranged cremation.
The ashes were scattered at sea.
Another clean disappearance.
My goal became finding the church.
The sign behind Richard read St. Agnes Winter Shelter.
Everett called the shelter under a false name.
A volunteer remembered the man.
He used the name Robert Hale.
He came every December and donated anonymously.
He had left two days earlier with a woman doctor.
Rebecca.
Everett paced the hospital room.
His father and sister were both alive.
Both tied to Rosehaven.
Both hiding from Eleanor—or working with her.
Then a courier delivered a Christmas gift box to the nurses’ station.
No return name.
Inside was a wooden ornament shaped like a star.
Everett recognized it from childhood.
Richard carved one for each family member.
The back contained coordinates.
A remote lodge in Maine.
There was also a note.
Bring Maren. Leave the child.
I refused.
Everett agreed.
That became our first real confrontation since the truth began.
“You are not taking me anywhere without Noah.”
“It could be a trap.”
“Everything is a trap.”
“He asked us to leave him.”
“Which means Noah is the point.”
Everett knew I was right.
We traveled under private security with Noah beside me.
The lodge stood beyond a frozen lake.
Richard waited inside near a fireplace.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
Everett entered first.
Neither man moved.
Then Richard said, “You look like your mother.”
Everett’s expression sharpened.
“Eleanor isn’t my mother.”
Richard nodded.
“No.”
He revealed that Everett’s biological mother was Rebecca Mercer, Benjamin’s eldest niece.
She died giving birth.
Richard and Eleanor raised Everett together, but Eleanor never legally adopted him.
That meant Everett belonged to the Brooks executive line but not Eleanor’s bloodline.
Our marriage had been deliberately engineered to unite both succession branches.
Richard admitted rewriting the trust.
He claimed it was the only way to stop Benjamin’s board from selling children through Judith Price’s maternity network.
By tying control to a future child, he hoped to delay the transfer until he could expose them.
Instead, Eleanor weaponized the clause.
“Why fake your death?” Everett asked.
Richard looked at Noah.
“Because I found the nursery.”
Rosehaven had existed for decades under different names.
Richard tried to shut it down.
Eleanor drugged him, declared him dead, and kept him under supervised confinement.
Rebecca helped him escape years later.
Then Rebecca entered from the back room.
She looked at me with guilt.
“I delivered Noah because Eleanor ordered me to.”
“Why obey her?”
Rebecca placed a medical file on the table.
“She has my daughter.”
Her daughter had been taken at birth and hidden within the same system.
Rebecca believed Noah was her only bargaining chip.
May you like
I thought Rebecca ran Rosehaven willingly—but she had spent eight years helping Eleanor while trying to recover her own stolen child.
The name in her daughter’s file was the same name printed on my hospital visitor badge.
