Chapter 6 - The Baby Who Arrived Without a Birth Certificate
The envelope from Eleanor Moretti's files was yellowed at the edges, but the handwriting was unmistakable. Vincent's mother had written her confession with the careful precision she once used to address wedding invitations. I read the first page twice before I could bring myself to call June.
"Where did you find the rest?" I asked.
"Behind the false back of her desk," my sister said. "The estate attorney sent the box to the storage company by mistake. Claire, there's a second page. You need to sit down."
I was already sitting in our hotel room. Outside, Boston traffic hissed through rain. Noah had gone downstairs with Ethan to buy sandwiches, a small ordinary errand I was grateful for. Vincent waited in the lobby because I had told him he wasn't coming upstairs until I knew what his mother's letter said.
June sent the remaining photographs.
Eleanor wrote that eighteen years earlier Sophia had arrived at the Moretti estate carrying a newborn wrapped in a blue hospital blanket. She claimed the baby's mother had abandoned him and insisted Vincent was the father. There had been no birth certificate, no hospital discharge papers, and no medical records identifying Sophia as the mother. Eleanor had known that. She had instructed the family's lawyer to make the problem disappear.
The next paragraph made my stomach turn.
I believed Sophia's story because she provided a private paternity report. I later learned the laboratory had never issued it. By then the child was loved, and I was afraid the truth would destroy him.
I stared at the words. Ethan, who had spent his life believing Sophia was his mother, had been brought into the Moretti house as a newborn with no documented history. His existence wasn't a scandal to be solved. He was a person who deserved to know where he came from.
Eleanor had included a name: Miriam Hale, a nurse who had worked nights at a private Chicago maternity clinic that closed the following year.
I called Vincent and asked him to come up alone.
He entered without his jacket, looking more tired than he had at the auditorium. I handed him the photographs. He read in silence. At the sentence about the forged paternity report, he pressed his thumb against the bridge of his nose.
"I held Ethan when he was three days old," he said. "Sophia told me the delivery had been complicated. I didn't ask for paperwork. I was proud. I was an idiot."
"You were lied to," I said. "That doesn't make Ethan any less your son."
He looked up sharply. "He is my son. Whatever those papers say."
"Then tell him the truth before someone else turns it into a weapon."
Vincent crossed to the window. "Sophia knows we're looking. She's already called the family office and ordered them not to release records."
"Can she do that?"
"Not anymore. I've suspended her authority pending the audit. But there are people in Chicago who owe her favors."
He said it like a warning, and I understood why. The Moretti fortune had been built on freight terminals, real estate, and contracts negotiated in rooms where the wrong person could lose everything. Vincent had spent years insisting the family business was clean. I wondered how many secrets had been buried beneath that word.
"No intimidation," I told him. "No threats. We find Miriam, and we let the lawyers work."
"Agreed."
When Noah and Ethan returned, I had to watch Vincent tell Ethan that the documents raised serious questions about his birth. Vincent didn't show him the photographs first. He explained what he knew, what he didn't, and what he was going to do next.
Ethan stood with the paper bag of sandwiches hanging from his fingers. "So Sophia might not be my biological mother?"
"That's possible," Vincent said. "I don't know yet."
"And you might not be my biological father."
Vincent took one step forward, then stopped. "I may not be. But I have been your dad every day of your life. I don't intend to stop."
Ethan set the sandwiches on the table. His face went hard in a way that reminded me of Vincent. "Why does everybody keep deciding what I can handle?"
"You're right," I said quietly. "You should have been told as soon as we knew."
He looked at me, surprised that I hadn't tried to soften the truth.
"I want to see the letter," he said.
Vincent handed him the phone. Ethan read every page, then asked to be alone. Noah followed him to the door but didn't touch his shoulder.
"I'll be down the hall," Noah said. "If you want company. Or if you don't."
Ethan nodded once.
That evening, our attorney located Miriam Hale's last known address in Vermont. June found a newspaper clipping that showed the nurse had testified years earlier in a case involving falsified adoption paperwork. The case had been dismissed after a witness withdrew.
At eleven, a message arrived from an unknown number.
STOP LOOKING FOR MIRIAM HALE. SHE ALREADY LOST ONE CHILD BECAUSE OF THE MORETTIS.
I showed it to Vincent. His face changed, not with rage but recognition.
"What?" I asked.
He sat down slowly. "My mother once told me there was a girl in the family who disappeared before I was born. I thought she meant a cousin."
"What girl?"
"She wouldn't say. Only that my father paid for silence and called it mercy."
I looked at the threatening message again. The person who sent it knew we were searching for Miriam. They also knew the Moretti family history better than I did.
May you like
Then Ethan called from his room.
"Dad," he said, his voice shaking. "Sophia just sent me a photograph. It's a picture of me as a baby. On the back is a woman's name. And it isn't hers."
