Chapter 2 - The Day Maren Lost Everything
Eighteen months earlier, Maren Vale woke up in St. Catherine’s Hospital with three broken ribs, fourteen stitches along her hairline, and one question.
“Where’s Elodie?”
Nobody answered.
Her mother-in-law, Vivian Mercer, stared at the floor.
Grant Mercer stood near the window.
Celestine sat beside Maren’s bed holding a sleeping two-year-old Elodie.
Maren tried to sit up.
Pain exploded through her chest.
“Give me my daughter.”
Celestine didn’t move.
“Maren,” Grant said carefully, “the doctors say you need time.”
“I asked for Elodie.”
Celestine finally looked at her.
“You nearly killed yourself.”
Maren froze.
“What?”
“The car.”
The memories returned in flashes.
Rain.
Headlights.
A curve on Highway 1.
Her brakes going soft beneath her foot.
Maren gripping the steering wheel.
Then darkness.
She remembered being alone.
Elodie had been with a babysitter.
“No,” Maren whispered. “Something happened to the brakes.”
Celestine’s mouth tightened.
“Your blood test showed sedatives.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You shouldn’t have been driving.”
“I didn’t take anything.”
Grant stepped forward.
“Everyone needs to calm down.”
But Maren couldn’t.
Because six weeks earlier, her husband Adrian Mercer had died after falling from his sailboat during a solo trip.
Now Maren had nearly died too.
And Celestine was holding her child.
“Give her to me.”
Celestine stood.
Elodie woke and began crying.
“Mama?”
Maren reached out.
Celestine stepped backward.
That movement stayed burned into Maren’s memory.
“Maren,” Celestine said, “you need help.”
“I need my daughter.”
“You need to prove you’re safe around her.”
Three days later, while Maren was still hospitalized, Celestine filed for emergency temporary guardianship.
She claimed Maren was abusing prescription medication.
She submitted the hospital toxicology report.
She submitted photographs of Maren’s wrecked car.
And she submitted statements from two Mercer household employees saying Maren had seemed “confused” in the weeks after Adrian’s death.
The judge granted temporary guardianship for thirty days.
Maren was devastated.
But she understood why a judge might be cautious.
So she did everything the court asked.
She attended counseling.
She completed drug screenings.
Every test came back clean.
She submitted medical records.
She hired attorney Claire Donovan.
And she waited for the thirty days to end.
They never did.
Two days before the review hearing, Claire arrived at Maren’s apartment carrying a document.
“Maren,” she said, “I need you to look at this.”
It was titled CONSENT TO PERMANENT GUARDIANSHIP.
Maren read the first page.
Then the second.
Her hands started shaking.
At the bottom was her signature.
Except it wasn’t her signature.
“I didn’t sign this.”
Claire stared at her.
“You’re sure?”
“I would remember giving away my daughter.”
The document had been notarized.
It stated that Maren, overwhelmed by grief and struggling with substance dependency, believed Elodie would be safer with Celestine.
Maren felt physically sick.
“This is fake.”
But Celestine produced a witness.
Victor Hale.
The Mercer family’s longtime financial adviser.
Victor testified that Maren had been emotional but lucid when she signed.
The court-appointed handwriting examiner couldn’t conclusively determine whether the signature was forged.
And then Celestine produced something worse.
A voicemail.
Maren’s own voice said:
“I can’t do this anymore. Elodie deserves better than me.”
Maren remembered the sentence.
But not the context.
She had left that voicemail for Adrian three months before his death after Elodie had spent forty-eight hours sick with pneumonia and Maren had gone nearly two days without sleep.
The full message had continued:
“I’m exhausted. I feel like I’m failing tonight. Please come home early.”
Those words had been cut out.
But Maren couldn’t prove who edited the recording.
The permanent guardianship was granted pending review.
Her visits became supervised.
Celestine moved Elodie into the Mercer estate.
And slowly, deliberately, she began replacing Maren.
She told Elodie to call her “Mama C.”
She removed photographs of Maren from Elodie’s room.
She changed Elodie’s preschool.
Then came the cruelest moment.
During one supervised visit, Elodie looked at Maren and whispered:
“Mama C says you went away because you didn’t want me.”
Maren felt her heart crack.
She knelt immediately.
“That is not true.”
The supervisor looked uncomfortable.
Elodie touched Maren’s face.
“You still want me?”
“Every second of every day.”
Across the room, Celestine watched through the glass.
And smiled.
That was when Maren understood.
Celestine wasn’t protecting Elodie.
She was teaching her to forget her mother.
But Maren still didn’t understand why.
Until Claire found something strange buried in Adrian Mercer’s trust documents.
Elodie wasn’t merely the youngest Mercer.
She was about to inherit something enormous.
May you like
And whoever legally controlled Elodie would control it too.
👉 When Maren learned what Adrian had left their daughter, Celestine’s obsession stopped looking like jealousy—and started looking like a calculated theft.
