Chapter 10 - THE STORED BLOOD
The cord-blood company still had the sample.
That was the first good news.
The second was better.
They would not release it simply because someone called and demanded it.
We needed proper authorization and identity verification.
For once, bureaucracy felt comforting.
Rachel asked the company to preserve all account records associated with the sample.
Then she examined the forged form.
The listed customer email did not belong to me.
The phone number was disconnected.
The billing method had been prepaid.
Someone had deliberately created an account in my name.
“Could Vanessa have done it?” Daniel asked.
Vanessa exploded.
“Why is everything me?”
I looked at her.
“You put my child in a pit yesterday.”
She stopped.
Consequences.
Thomas Reed examined the form through video.
“I’ve seen that handwriting.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where?”
“Emily’s clinic.”
The handwritten annotations beside my forged signature resembled notes made by one of the clinic’s administrative employees.
Not Thomas.
A woman named Susan Mercer.
Diane knew her.
“She handled billing.”
“Where is she now?”
Nobody knew.
The clinic had closed.
Rachel began locating its records custodian.
Daniel contacted St. Matthew’s compliance department regarding the suspicious authorization.
Nobody handed us instant confidential files.
But preservation notices went out.
Then I asked Vanessa the question she had been avoiding.
“Why did you suddenly become convinced Lily was Emily’s?”
She looked at Robert.
He looked away.
“Six months ago, I got a letter.”
“What letter?”
She retrieved a photograph from her phone.
No return address.
Typed message.
YOUR SISTER’S DAUGHTER DID NOT DIE.
SHE WENT HOME WITH CLAIRE BENNETT.
My skin went cold.
“Why didn’t you show me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“Maybe not. But you chose to secretly collect my daughter’s DNA instead.”
Vanessa swallowed.
The letter included a copy of Emily’s canceled transfer form.
That was why Vanessa started investigating.
Someone had deliberately reignited her grief and pointed it at me.
The preliminary DNA result then appeared to confirm the accusation.
“Who suggested the lab?” I asked.
“Dad.”
Robert shook his head.
“I got the lab name from the letter.”
He pulled up the original.
At the bottom:
FOR CONFIRMATION: HARBOR GENETICS.
The same lab Daniel’s father had once used.
That coincidence bothered Daniel.
“Dad knows the owner.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Michael Grant.”
Another Grant.
No relation to Vanessa’s brother.
But Daniel’s face remained tense.
“Michael has worked with my father for years.”
I asked why Charles Bennett needed paternity testing.
Daniel looked away.
“Not for me.”
“Then who?”
He hesitated.
“My older brother.”
I had never heard Daniel mention an older brother.
“Daniel.”
“He died as an infant.”
My stomach tightened.
“When?”
“Thirty-eight years ago.”
“Name?”
“Jonathan.”
Vanessa stared at him too.
Daniel whispered, “My mother always believed the hospital gave her the wrong baby after Jonathan died.”
Nobody spoke.
The same accusation.
A dead infant.
A hospital.
A questionable DNA lab.
Two generations apart.
Then Rachel said what I was thinking.
“Someone may be using an old Bennett family trauma to make this new claim believable.”
Daniel looked at the Harbor Genetics report again.
May you like
And suddenly the laboratory itself became more important than Vanessa’s theory.
📖 The anonymous letter had deliberately weaponized an old Bennett tragedy, and the DNA lab behind Vanessa’s test was connected to the family decades before Lily was born. 👇
