Chapter 6 - A Name That Was Never Mine
"No."
The word came out before I could think.
Alexander was still on the phone.
Richard was sitting across from me.
Margaret Hale had gone completely motionless.
But I could barely see either of them.
I was staring at the photograph of a baby in a yellow blanket.
A baby named Rebecca.
A baby who might have been me.
"You're lying," I whispered.
Alexander's voice came through the speaker.
"I wish I were."
I looked at Richard.
"Tell me he's lying."
He didn't.
That frightened me more than anything Alexander had said.
"My father had photographs of my birth."
My voice rose.
"I had birthday parties."
"Emily," Margaret said gently.
"I had a birth certificate."
Richard leaned forward.
"Documents can be amended."
I stared at him.
"And parents can be replaced?"
Nobody answered.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I reached for the door handle.
Richard caught my wrist.
"Emily, the car is moving."
"Let go."
He released me immediately.
I pressed my forehead against the cold window.
I remembered my mother's perfume.
My father's hands lifting me onto his shoulders.
The night he taught me to ride a bicycle.
Every ordinary memory was suddenly under examination.
Had they been pretending?
Had they loved me because they were kind people protecting someone else's daughter?
Or had every embrace been part of another secret?
Alexander spoke again.
"Emily, I need you to understand something."
I lifted the phone.
"What?"
"Nothing about your childhood was supposed to be a lie."
I laughed bitterly.
"That's an impressive distinction."
"Your parents loved you."
"You don't know that."
"I do."
"How?"
His voice became quiet.
"Because your father told me."
I closed my eyes.
"Tell me about the call."
Alexander hesitated.
"Not on this phone."
I pulled the device closer.
"Then you should have considered that before making me marry you."
The line went silent.
Then he said something I wasn't prepared for.
"I didn't make you love me, Emily."
I felt tears burn behind my eyes.
"No."
I swallowed.
"You just made sure I never knew who I was loving."
I ended the call.
For several minutes, nobody spoke.
Finally, Richard said, "There's a test we can arrange."
I turned.
"What kind of test?"
"A legally documented DNA comparison."
"With whom?"
Margaret opened her handbag.
"I can provide the contact information for an independent genetic laboratory."
I looked at her.
"That's not what I asked."
She hesitated.
Richard answered.
"Mercer."
I stared at him.
"You want me to ask that man for a DNA sample?"
"Not directly."
"Then how?"
"His paternity has already been examined in sealed proceedings."
I went still.
"What proceedings?"
Richard reached into his briefcase.
For a moment, I thought he might produce yet another document he'd spent years hiding.
Instead, he removed a small notebook.
"Your father challenged certain assumptions about Rebecca's identity before his death."
I looked at him.
"Did he know I wasn't his daughter?"
Richard's eyes softened.
"Emily, he never once referred to you as anything other than his daughter."
"That's not an answer."
"No."
He swallowed.
"By the end, he believed you might be Eleanor's biological child."
I stared at him.
"And he didn't tell me."
"He had no conclusive proof."
"He could have asked."
Richard's expression became pained.
"Yes."
"He could have asked me."
"Yes."
I looked away.
Somehow, that admission hurt more than another excuse would have.
Margaret leaned forward.
"There's something else."
I laughed without humor.
"Of course there is."
"The woman in the photograph may have been Eleanor."
"May have been?"
"Identical twins can be difficult to distinguish in old photographs."
I turned.
"Are you telling me it could have been my mother?"
"Possibly."
"But my mother was dead by then."
Margaret's face tightened.
"We don't know that."
I felt my stomach drop.
"You signed her death certificate."
"Yes."
"And now you're telling me you don't know whether she died."
"I know someone died in the fire."
She paused.
"I do not know, with medical certainty, that it was Catherine."
The car seemed suddenly too small.
I pressed my hands against my knees.
I had always imagined my mother lying beneath the ground in the little cemetery outside Hartford.
Every year, I placed white roses beside her headstone.
I told her about school.
About my first job.
About Alexander.
I once spent an entire afternoon beside that grave after my miscarriage, crying because I wanted my mother and didn't know how to survive being someone's mother when I had already lost mine.
Now I didn't even know whether she was buried there.
Richard spoke quietly.
"Your father ordered a private review of the identification records shortly before he died."
I looked up.
"What did he find?"
"He was waiting for the laboratory's report."
"Did it arrive?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Two days after his funeral."
I stared at him.
"And?"
Richard's voice dropped.
"The samples were inconclusive."
I closed my eyes.
"Inconclusive."
"Because the retained biological material had been compromised."
I thought about the possibility of a woman living somewhere with my mother's face.
The hope was almost unbearable.
I couldn't let myself believe it.
Not yet.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
Richard hesitated.
"To a secure apartment I use for clients."
"No."
He frowned.
"Emily—"
"Take me to my father's old office."
"That's not advisable."
"I didn't ask for advice."
The driver glanced at us in the rearview mirror.
Richard looked exhausted.
"Your father's building was sold."
"I know."
"But there is a storage facility where some of his records were retained."
I leaned forward.
"Then take me there."
He considered it.
Finally, he nodded.
"All right."
The storage facility was on the outskirts of Cambridge, tucked behind a row of warehouses.
We arrived shortly after midnight.
Richard led us through a narrow corridor lined with metal doors.
The air smelled of cardboard and industrial cleaning solution.
At unit 214, he stopped.
"This contains some of your father's personal effects."
I stared at him.
"You told me everything had been distributed."
"Most of it was."
"And the rest?"
He looked ashamed.
"I kept it."
I was beyond surprise.
He opened the unit.
Inside were twelve archive boxes, a wooden filing cabinet, a broken desk lamp, and the old drafting table I remembered from my father's office.
I stopped at the entrance.
The drafting table had a burn mark near the edge.
I had made it when I was nine, trying to heat a piece of metal for a science project.
My father had been furious for approximately thirty seconds.
Then he'd laughed and told me every good engineer made mistakes.
I touched the wood.
For the first time that night, the tears came.
Not because of Alexander.
Not because of the money.
Because this piece of furniture still existed.
Because my father had touched it.
Because he had once loved me in a world that made sense.
Richard waited quietly.
I wiped my face.
"Where are his personal records?"
He pointed to the cabinet.
I pulled open the first drawer.
Invoices.
Correspondence.
Tax records.
I moved to the second.
Old notebooks.
Employee contracts.
A folder labeled Family.
My hands began to shake.
Inside were photographs.
My father holding me as a toddler.
My mother standing beside a Christmas tree.
A school portrait from when I was six.
And a small envelope addressed in my father's handwriting.
For my daughter, Emily.
I stared at it.
Then opened it.
Inside was a short letter.
Emily,
If you're reading this, Richard has finally decided that protecting you requires telling you the truth instead of hiding it.
I am sorry I made that decision difficult for him.
Whatever the records say about your birth, you are my daughter.
You always have been.
I loved you before you could speak, and I will love you after I am gone.
If you ever doubt that, remember the night we built the paper bridge.
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
The paper bridge.
I was seven.
A school project.
I had cried because my design wouldn't hold the weight of a stack of pennies.
My father stayed awake with me until two in the morning.
He didn't build the bridge for me.
He taught me how to make it stronger.
When it finally worked, he said something I had forgotten until that moment.
"Strength isn't about never bending, sweetheart."
"It's about knowing what holds you together."
I folded the letter against my chest.
For a few seconds, I could almost hear his voice.
Then I noticed another sentence written beneath his signature.
Do not trust the date on the photograph.
I stared at it.
My pulse quickened.
I looked at Richard.
"What photograph?"
He frowned.
I held out the letter.
He read it.
His expression changed.
"Emily, where did you find this?"
"In the family folder."
He looked toward Margaret.
She stepped closer.
"What date?"
I reached for the photograph from the ballroom.
Six years before my wedding.
Eight years after my mother's funeral.
The numbers had seemed impossible.
Now I examined the back more carefully.
The date was handwritten.
But beneath it, almost invisible in the photograph's glossy surface, was a faint rectangular impression.
Something had once been attached there.
A label.
I turned it toward the light.
There was a partial serial number.
And below it, the corner of a faded logo.
Richard stared.
"That's not a photographic processing mark."
Margaret leaned closer.
"What is it?"
Richard's voice became almost inaudible.
"It's a document-control label."
I looked at him.
"Meaning?"
"The picture may have been copied from an archived evidence file."
I felt cold again.
"Evidence of what?"
May you like
Richard lifted his eyes.
"A federal investigation."
