Chapter 6 - The Baby Margaret Said She Lost
Margaret refused to explain.
She folded her arms and stared at the damaged archive.
“Not here.”
Daniel laughed without humor.
“You keep saying that like there’s a safe place to explain thirty-five years of lies.”
Vanessa was staring at her mother differently.
Then she whispered, “The miscarriage.”
Margaret’s head snapped toward her.
“What?”
Vanessa looked at Daniel.
“I was three. I don’t remember it clearly.”
“What miscarriage?”
“Mom used to tell people she lost a baby before you.”
Margaret stood.
“Vanessa.”
“No.”
Her daughter stepped backward.
“You told Aunt Carolyn once that you were pregnant when Thomas died.”
The room went silent.
Daniel’s face emptied.
Margaret said, “You were a child.”
“I heard you fighting.”
“That proves nothing.”
Vanessa pressed her fingers against her forehead.
“You said Richard saved the family after Thomas died.”
Margaret looked toward the security employee.
“Everyone out.”
Nobody moved.
I asked Vanessa, “What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
Margaret shouted, “Leave her alone!”
Vanessa flinched.
Then something hardened.
“No.”
She looked at Daniel.
“I remember Mom didn’t have pictures of you in the hospital.”
Daniel frowned.
“Lots of people didn’t.”
“No.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“You had baby pictures. Just none from the day you were born.”
Margaret’s voice dropped.
“Stop.”
“Dad used to say you came home twice.”
Daniel stared.
“What does that mean?”
“I thought he meant from the hospital.”
Margaret suddenly grabbed her handbag.
Daniel blocked the door.
“You’re not leaving.”
She glared.
“Move.”
“Tell me why Thomas thought your baby was dead.”
Her face froze.
That was the question.
Not whether Thomas was his father.
Why Thomas never knew Daniel survived.
Margaret finally sat again.
Her hands trembled in her lap.
“Thomas died believing I had lost the pregnancy.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“Did you?”
“No.”
The word was barely audible.
“Why did he believe that?”
“Because I told him.”
Daniel’s face twisted.
“You told my father I was dead?”
“He was going to destroy everything.”
“How?”
“He wanted to tell Richard.”
I stepped closer.
“About the affair.”
Margaret looked at me with hatred.
“Yes.”
Thomas and Margaret had been together while she was married to Richard.
She became pregnant.
Thomas wanted the truth exposed.
Margaret wanted the Bennett family intact.
So she told Thomas the pregnancy had ended.
He died months later in a highway accident.
Daniel was born seven months after that.
Richard raised him.
“Did Richard know?”
Margaret looked away.
“Eventually.”
“When?”
“After you were born.”
Daniel swallowed.
“And what did he do?”
“He gave you his name.”
“Because he loved me?”
“Yes.”
“Or because admitting what happened would expose you?”
Her face tightened.
“Both can be true.”
That might have been the most honest thing she had said.
I picked up Thomas’s will.
“Why didn’t Richard transfer Thomas’s interest to Daniel?”
Margaret’s lips pressed together.
“He tried.”
Daniel stared.
“When?”
“Years later.”
“Why years later?”
“Because he didn’t know you were Thomas’s son at first.”
“How did he find out?”
Margaret looked at the burned DNA fragment.
“Testing.”
B-17.
Twenty-six years ago.
Daniel had been nine.
The same age as the stored profile Margaret later used to fabricate Lily’s negative paternity report.
I understood.
“B-17 was Daniel’s childhood DNA file.”
Margaret said nothing.
“You kept his genetic material from that test.”
Still nothing.
“And twenty-six years later you used an archived child sample from the same investigation to fake Lily’s test.”
Her eyes shifted.
Not enough.
But I saw it.
Daniel did too.
“You made the report.”
His voice sounded dead.
Margaret lifted her chin.
“I needed time.”
“For what?”
“To protect what Richard built.”
“It wasn’t all Richard’s.”
“That company survived because of him.”
“It included Thomas’s forty percent.”
“Thomas was reckless.”
“He was my father!”
Daniel’s shout echoed through the records room.
Margaret’s face hardened.
“Richard was your father.”
“Then why did Richard create a trust clause specifically reopening Thomas’s branch?”
She had no answer.
Because Richard knew.
And apparently he had spent his final years trying to repair what they had buried.
The security employee found one more surviving object inside the metal sleeve.
A brass key.
A label was attached.
T.B. SAFE DEPOSIT — BOX 114.
Daniel stared.
“Thomas had a safe-deposit box?”
Margaret went pale again.
“You cannot open that.”
“Why?”
“It belongs to a dead man.”
Daniel picked up the key.
“A dead man who left everything to his unborn child.”
Margaret whispered, “There is nothing in that box.”
Vanessa looked at her.
“How would you know?”
Margaret stopped breathing.
Daniel closed his hand around the key.
May you like
She had just revealed the one thing she was desperate to hide.
She had been inside Thomas Bennett’s safe-deposit box before.
