Chapter 2 - THE FIRST DAUGHTER
Detective Ortiz ordered Luke to drop the bracelet.
He obeyed slowly.
The blood on his shirt came from a cut across his palm, not from anyone else. He had broken into the locked cabinet beneath the pantry stairs while Diane attacked me.
Inside, he found the bracelet, old medical files, adoption papers, and a cassette tape labeled ELEANOR — DELIVERY.
Eleanor Mercer was Luke’s older sister.
Diane had always told me Luke was an only child.
According to the medical file, Eleanor was born healthy thirty-one years earlier.
She was declared dead six hours later.
No cause was listed.
Diane refused to answer questions.
She demanded a lawyer and claimed the old records were private family property.
Ortiz bagged everything as evidence.
Paramedics transported me to the hospital.
Luke tried to ride beside me.
Daniel blocked him.
“You stood in that house while your mother hurt her.”
Luke looked at me.
“I was locked in the pantry.”
“You had a phone.”
“She took it.”
“You knew what she was capable of.”
His silence answered for him.
At the hospital, Dr. Naomi Brooks examined my bruises and monitored my daughter’s heartbeat.
The baby was alive.
Stable.
I held the monitor against my stomach and listened to the fast rhythm.
For the first time since the stick struck the floor, I allowed myself to cry.
Daniel sat beside the bed.
“You should have called me.”
“I thought you were flying to Seattle.”
“I never booked a flight.”
Luke had sent the false message from Daniel’s number.
He had used a cloned SIM card.
For weeks, someone had also blocked calls from my friends and family. Every person I trusted believed I wanted distance.
The isolation had been planned.
Detective Ortiz arrived carrying a copy of the forged termination consent.
The appointment was booked at Mercer Women’s Wellness Center, a private clinic owned by Diane’s cousin, Dr. Marcus Vale.
My insurance had already approved the procedure.
The reason listed was severe fetal abnormality.
My daughter had no abnormality.
Ortiz placed the hospital bracelet on the table.
“Baby Girl Mercer was Eleanor.”
“Where is she?”
“No death certificate exists.”
Luke sat in the corner.
He finally spoke.
“My father told me she died.”
“Robert knew?”
“He signed the discharge form.”
Robert Mercer had been dead for four years.
He died after falling from the ancestral display ladder in the dining room.
Diane said it was an accident.
Now I wondered what he had found before he fell.
Ortiz opened another file recovered from the pantry.
It contained birth records for six Mercer girls across four generations.
Each child had been declared dead, transferred, or erased within days of birth.
Boys remained with the family.
Girls disappeared.
“This wasn’t obsession,” Daniel said.
“It was a system.”
Luke looked sick.
“My mother called it preservation.”
The hospital room door opened.
A nurse entered with medication.
Dr. Brooks checked the label and immediately stopped her.
The syringe contained a sedative I had not been prescribed.
The nurse stared at it.
“I was told Dr. Vale authorized it.”
Ortiz took the syringe.
Luke stood.
“Mom still has people inside the hospital.”
Security locked down the floor.
Then my phone rang.
The caller ID displayed my own number.
Ortiz answered on speaker.
A woman whispered, “Claire, do not let them send your daughter to the Mercer clinic.”
“Who are you?”
A pause.
Then she said, “My name is Eleanor.”
Luke gripped the bedrail.
May you like
The woman continued.
“I’m the sister your husband was told died.”
