Chapter 10 - THE REPLACEMENTS
The courthouse archive listed four replacement pregnancies.
Each was created to substitute for a child the network lost control over.
Replacement 1 corresponded to Daniel.
Replacement 2 corresponded to Grace.
Replacement 3 corresponded to Ethan.
Replacement 4 was the child Laura now carried.
Eleanor believed families accepted substitutions if memories, records, and appearances were manipulated carefully.
A child who died could be replaced.
A missing twin could take a sibling’s place.
A mother could be declared unstable if she noticed differences.
That explained the repeated use of twins and relatives with similar faces.
Daniel had been trained to replace me socially.
Grace had been prepared to replace Emma if the original child became medically unsuitable.
Another boy had been raised to replace Ethan.
His name was Caleb.
Age six.
Living inside a Vale institution.
Federal agents found him.
Caleb had been shown videos of our home and told I was his father.
He knew Ethan’s favorite foods, teacher’s name, and bedtime routine.
He had practiced Ethan’s handwriting.
A six-year-old child had been trained to enter another boy’s life.
Caleb believed he had failed because Ethan escaped.
He asked whether he would be punished.
“No,” I said through the child advocate.
“Then what happens to me?”
“You get your real name and people who listen.”
He did not trust the answer.
Why would he?
Replacement 2 was not Grace.
It was another girl trained to become her if needed.
Federal agents located her at a Vale foster home.
Replacement 1 had disappeared years earlier.
Daniel believed the child grew into the man now calling himself Richard’s son.
The network did not simply steal identities.
It manufactured backups.
Eleanor treated people as interchangeable positions.
Laura decided to continue her pregnancy after receiving independent counseling.
The choice belonged to her.
We did not discuss reconciliation yet.
Pregnancy did not repair marriage.
Then Margaret offered to identify Eleanor’s final safe house in exchange for reduced charges.
Rebecca accepted information but promised nothing.
Margaret revealed the location.
The original Carter family estate.
A property supposedly destroyed by fire before I was born.
Its underground structure remained intact.
Eleanor had returned to the beginning.
Federal agents entered.
They found no Eleanor.
Only a dining table set for twelve people.
Each chair carried a family member’s name.
Laura.
David.
Daniel.
Margaret.
Madison.
Ethan.
Emma.
Grace.
Caleb.
The unborn baby.
Two empty chairs.
At the head of the table lay a note:
THE FAMILY IS NOT COMPLETE UNTIL THE FIRST MOTHER RETURNS.
Margaret stared at the message.
“My mother is talking about Caroline.”
“Who is Caroline?”
Margaret’s lips trembled.
“My twin sister.”
The aunt no one knew existed.
The woman who originally gave birth to me and Daniel.
Margaret was not our biological mother.
May you like
She had stolen her sister’s children.
Read Chapter 11 to discover how Margaret became mother to Caroline’s twins.
