Chapter 16 - THE TRAP WE SET OURSELVES
Vanessa wanted to contact Susan.
I said no.
She did it anyway.
That was the mistake that nearly destroyed our progress.
Vanessa sent one message to an old clinic email:
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
Susan replied within six minutes.
PROVE IT.
Vanessa called her.
By the time Rachel learned what was happening, they had spoken for eleven minutes.
“Did you record it?” Rachel asked.
Vanessa looked ashamed.
“No.”
“Did anyone witness it?”
“No.”
“What did Susan say?”
“She admitted sending the letter.”
That could have been valuable.
Now it was only Vanessa’s account.
“She said she wanted me to know the truth about Lily.”
“There was no truth.”
“I know that now.”
“What else?”
Vanessa hesitated.
“She said Claire stole something from her family.”
I stared.
“What?”
“She wouldn’t explain.”
Susan had shifted the grievance from Charles to me.
That made no sense.
Then Vanessa admitted she told Susan we had verified Lily’s maternity.
Susan laughed.
“She said we tested the wrong thing.”
My pulse accelerated.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
It was bait.
Rachel recognized it immediately.
“She wants us chasing another identity question.”
We refused.
That was growth.
Lily’s parentage was verified.
We would not let Susan reset the story.
Instead we focused on actions we could prove.
Forged cord-blood authorization.
False DNA report.
Anonymous letter.
Hospital access.
Potential misuse of records.
Those were enough to investigate without accepting Susan’s mythology.
Then the consequence of Vanessa’s call arrived.
The cord-blood storage company received a cancellation request.
Someone attempted to destroy the stored sample.
The company blocked it because of our preservation notice.
Our earlier caution saved the evidence.
But Susan now knew exactly which records mattered.
She began deleting old cloud accounts linked to the clinic.
Investigators preserved some data.
Other material disappeared before it could be secured.
Vanessa stared at the notification.
“This is my fault.”
“Yes,” I said.
She looked at me, expecting softness.
I didn’t give it.
“You wanted the satisfaction of confronting her more than you wanted to protect the investigation.”
Her eyes filled.
“That’s exactly what I did.”
For once, she didn’t defend herself.
Then Daniel found something unexpected in Margaret’s letter.
A reference to “Claire Mercer.”
My name.
Claire.
Mercer.
Not me.
A different Claire Mercer.
Samuel’s younger sister.
She had worked briefly at St. Matthew in 1988.
I stared at the page.
Susan’s statement suddenly made sense differently.
Claire stole something from her family.
She wasn’t talking about me.
She was talking about another Claire.
A woman with my first name.
Susan may have deliberately targeted me partly because my name echoed an old family story.
Daniel whispered, “What did Claire Mercer steal?”
Margaret’s letter gave only one clue.
A personnel file.
Helen Mercer’s disciplinary record disappeared after Jonathan’s bracelet incident.
Margaret suspected Samuel’s sister removed it to protect Helen.
Susan had grown up believing the Bennetts possessed that missing file.
If Susan thought our family still had it, the entire campaign might have been designed to force Charles to produce evidence he never knew existed.
Then Charles went pale.
“I have it.”
Everyone stared at him.
May you like
He whispered, “I just never knew what it was.”
📖 Charles had unknowingly possessed the document Susan wanted for decades, and revealing it could either end her grievance—or give her exactly the weapon she had been seeking. 👇
