Chapter 2 - The Son Who Was Never Buried
Daniel hit me from the side just as the second shot rang out.
We slammed against the driveway.
My shoulder struck the stone.
A shower of glass fell from somewhere above us.
For a moment, I couldn't tell whether the ringing in my ears was coming from the gunshots or from my own skull.
"Stay down!" Daniel shouted.
I tried to lift my head.
He shoved it back toward the ground.
"Samuel, don't."
"Where's my mother?"
"I don't know."
That answer frightened me more than the shooting.
Behind the SUV, somebody was shouting orders.
The security guards had drawn their weapons.
Another shot cracked.
Then a man's voice yelled, "Hold your fire! There's a civilian!"
A bright beam swept across the driveway.
I saw Victoria crouched beside the front tire of Richard's SUV.
Her emerald gown was torn at the knee.
Richard was nowhere near her.
Caroline was standing at the entrance, screaming for the guests to get away from the windows.
Then the headlights of the last vehicle came on.
A woman stepped into the light.
She wore a dark jacket, jeans, and a badge hanging from a chain around her neck.
"Federal agent!" she shouted. "Everybody put your hands where I can see them!"
Daniel raised both hands.
"He's unarmed."
The woman approached us.
"Daniel Vale?"
"That's me."
"Get your son off the ground."
I looked up.
"Who are you?"
"Special Agent Rebecca Shaw."
She crouched beside me.
"Can you stand?"
"I think so."
"Then stand slowly."
I got to my feet.
My left shoulder burned.
Blood was running down Daniel's forearm.
"You're hurt," I said.
He glanced at the wound.
"Scrape."
"That's a bullet wound."
"Then it's a very expensive scrape."
I stared at him.
He looked embarrassed.
"Sorry. Bad habit."
The agent examined his arm.
"Exit wound. You're lucky."
Daniel laughed once.
"Nobody's ever accused me of that before."
She wasn't amused.
"Get him to a medic."
Two men moved toward us.
Daniel shook his head.
"I'm not leaving him."
"You're going to get your arm treated," she replied. "That's not a negotiation."
He looked at me.
For the first time, I saw something familiar in his face.
Not because we looked alike.
We did, a little.
The same narrow nose.
The same dark eyes.
But it was the way he hesitated before letting somebody else take responsibility for me.
I'd spent my entire childhood wishing Richard would look at me like that.
"Go," I told him.
Daniel nodded.
Then he looked at Agent Shaw.
"He's been warned not to trust me."
She glanced at my phone.
"Good."
I stared at her.
"Excuse me?"
She stood.
"Your grandmother was right to warn you."
"You know my grandmother?"
"I know she's the reason we started investigating Harrington Consolidated."
"Where is she?"
"Safe enough for tonight."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer I can give you right now."
Behind us, emergency floodlights flickered on.
The mansion reappeared in a wash of cold white light.
A shattered window on the second floor glittered above the driveway.
One security guard was lying on the lawn with another guard kneeling beside him.
Agent Shaw followed my gaze.
"He's breathing. Paramedics are coming."
"Who fired?"
"We're finding out."
I looked toward the house.
"Where's Richard?"
Her expression became unreadable.
"That's a good question."
We found my stepfather eleven minutes later.
Not in his office.
Not hiding in the basement.
He was standing in the ballroom, speaking to the guests.
When Agent Shaw and I entered, Richard was holding a microphone.
"...a deeply unfortunate personal disturbance," he was saying. "I assure you there is no danger to our guests."
He wore the same navy suit.
His tie was straight.
His shoes were spotless.
Only a tiny cut on his cheek suggested that anything unusual had happened.
The room was full of people who had spent their lives watching Richard Harrington tell them what reality was supposed to look like.
They were watching him do it again.
"The matter involves a troubled young man whom our family has tried to help for several years."
I stopped walking.
There it was.
The familiar story.
The ungrateful son.
The addiction accusations.
The mental instability.
The wealthy family doing everything possible for him while he destroyed himself.
Richard saw me.
He didn't stop speaking.
"And although tonight's events are upsetting, we remain committed to his recovery."
Something inside me went very still.
Agent Shaw touched my arm.
"Don't."
I looked at her.
"He's telling two hundred people I'm crazy."
"I heard."
"He's been doing it for months."
"I know."
"Then let me stop him."
She watched me for a moment.
"Don't give him the scene he wants."
Richard lowered the microphone.
He smiled sadly.
"Ethan. You're all right."
Every head turned.
I could feel their eyes moving over my wrinkled shirt.
The blood on my sleeve.
The bruise forming beneath my cheekbone.
Richard extended one hand.
"Come here, son."
I didn't move.
He let his arm fall.
"Please don't make this harder on your mother."
My mother entered behind us.
Her gown was torn.
Her mascara had streaked down her cheeks.
And she had a white envelope in her hand.
"Richard," she said.
He looked toward her.
"Sweetheart, you're shaken. Go upstairs."
She walked straight past him.
Then she took the microphone.
A murmur moved through the ballroom.
"Six weeks ago," Victoria began, "I buried my mother."
Richard's smile disappeared.
"Victoria."
She ignored him.
"Tonight I learned that the funeral may have been arranged using false medical records."
Someone gasped.
Victoria looked down at the envelope.
"My son brought me information that my husband has refused to explain."
Richard stepped toward her.
She raised her hand.
"Stay where you are."
The room fell silent.
I had never heard her speak to him that way.
She took a breath.
"I don't know what happened twenty-four years ago."
Her voice broke.
"I don't know who signed the original records. I don't know what happened to my mother's body, or why someone used a different woman's name at a private hospital."
Then she looked at me.
"But I do know this."
She swallowed.
"My son came home asking me to listen, and I threw his keys into the driveway."
Tears slid down her face.
"I was wrong."
It should have been a beautiful moment.
The kind of moment I'd imagined a hundred times.
My mother finally seeing me.
Finally standing up for me.
But I couldn't feel any triumph.
Because I kept hearing Richard's words.
He's not your son.
Victoria turned back to the guests.
"My husband's company is under investigation. Until I know what happened, I will not defend him."
Richard took the microphone from her.
Not violently.
Almost gently.
"That's enough, Victoria."
She let him have it.
Then she walked down the ballroom steps toward me.
"Ethan?"
I looked at her.
She reached for my hand.
I stepped away.
The movement hurt both of us.
I could see that.
But I couldn't pretend nothing had changed.
"Don't," I said quietly.
Her face crumpled.
"I didn't know."
"That's what I need to find out."
She lowered her hand.
Richard was still watching us.
I followed Agent Shaw out.
Two hours later, I was sitting in a federal interview room in downtown Albany.
There was a paper cup of coffee in front of me.
The coffee tasted like burned cardboard.
I drank it anyway.
Agent Shaw sat across the table with a folder.
"Let's start with the phone call," she said.
"Grandma called at nine fourteen."
"Did she tell you where she was?"
"No."
"What did she say?"
I repeated the conversation.
Every word I could remember.
When I finished, Shaw made a note.
"Did she mention a woman named Margaret Bell?"
"No."
"How about Mara Bell?"
"No."
"What about Dr. Francis Mercer?"
I remembered the name.
"Mercer?"
She looked up.
"Yes."
"Richard's attorney is named Mercer."
"Adrian Mercer. Francis is his father."
"Are they involved?"
"That's what we're determining."
I sat back.
"Why are you asking me questions when you obviously know more than I do?"
"Because knowing something and proving it are different."
She opened the folder.
Inside were three photographs.
The first showed a younger Richard Harrington standing outside a hospital.
The second showed Eleanor Whitcomb beside a woman in blue scrubs.
The third showed three newborn babies in clear plastic bassinets.
The same nursery photograph Grandma had hidden in the envelope.
"Do you recognize this?" Shaw asked.
"Yes."
"Tell me what you see."
"Three babies."
"What else?"
I leaned forward.
There were three handwritten tags.
The first read:
HARRINGTON, ETHAN W.
The second:
VALE, SAMUEL D.
The third:
BELL, LUCY M.
I pointed at the third name.
"Who's Lucy?"
Agent Shaw turned another page.
"Lucy Bell was born seven minutes after Samuel Vale."
"What happened to her?"
"Her mother was a maternity nurse named Mara Bell. Lucy survived. She's twenty-four now."
"And?"
"Mara Bell disappeared fourteen days after the hospital reported Samuel Vale's death."
I stared at the photograph.
"Disappeared?"
"Her car was recovered near the Hudson River. No body was ever found."
"What does that have to do with me?"
Shaw slid a photocopy toward me.
It was a handwritten note.
Four words.
THREE BABIES. TWO FATHERS. ONE LIE.
"That note was mailed to Eleanor Whitcomb three months before her reported death," Shaw said.
"Who sent it?"
"We don't know."
I looked at the nursery photograph again.
"Two fathers?"
"Richard Harrington and Daniel Vale are the two men named in the original investigation."
"But Richard isn't my biological father."
"No."
"Then what does the note mean?"
Shaw didn't answer.
Instead, she opened another file.
"This is a copy of the medical examiner's report for the infant Daniel Vale was convicted of murdering."
I felt sick.
"Do I have to see that?"
"No."
I looked at the folder.
"Show me."
She handed me the report.
Most of the details meant nothing to me.
Medical terminology.
Measurements.
A description of a newborn boy.
Then I reached the identification section.
The body had been identified as Samuel Vale by Dr. Francis Mercer.
No independent DNA comparison had been conducted.
The hospital identification bracelet was reportedly lost.
The body was cremated under an emergency court order.
I looked up.
"Why would they cremate a baby before his father could see him?"
Shaw's expression hardened.
"That's one of the questions Daniel's attorneys raised during his appeal."
I pushed the paper away.
For years, I had believed that somewhere, in some cemetery, there was a baby who had died before I was born.
Now it looked as though the dead child might have been somebody else.
Or perhaps there had never been a body at all.
"Do you think Richard stole me?"
Shaw folded her hands.
"I think someone altered your identity."
"That's a very careful answer."
"It's a serious accusation."
"And you're afraid of getting it wrong?"
"I'm afraid of telling you something that changes your life and then discovering the evidence doesn't support it."
I looked down.
It was the first honest answer I'd heard all night.
"Okay."
Shaw reached into her folder.
"There is something else."
She placed a small photograph in front of me.
A young man stood outside an auto repair shop.
He was wearing a gray work shirt.
His hair was dark.
His shoulders were broad.
And his face—
I stopped breathing.
He looked like me.
Not exactly.
His jaw was wider.
His eyes were lighter.
But the resemblance was unmistakable.
"Who is that?"
"His name is Owen Bell."
"Bell?"
"He was raised by a woman named Margaret Bell in Schenectady."
"Is he related to Lucy?"
"According to the records, Margaret is Mara Bell's older sister."
I looked at the photograph again.
"Is he the real Ethan?"
Shaw hesitated.
"We don't have a court-admissible DNA result yet."
"But you think he is."
"Yes."
"Does he know?"
"He knows something is wrong with his birth records."
I rubbed my face.
"What does he think happened?"
Shaw looked at the photograph.
"He thinks his mother abandoned him."
I swallowed.
"Has anybody told him she didn't?"
"Not yet."
I picked up the photograph.
He was smiling.
A small, crooked smile.
One I recognized.
My grandmother had the same smile.
I stared at him for a long time.
Then I asked the question I had been avoiding since the driveway.
"If he's Ethan Harrington..."
Shaw waited.
"...then who am I?"
She turned a page.
A laboratory report appeared beneath her hand.
"Your grandmother submitted biological samples before she disappeared. We have preliminary results, but the chain of custody means they can't yet establish your legal identity."
I leaned forward.
"What do they say?"
She met my eyes.
"They strongly support Daniel Vale being your biological father."
I stared at her.
"And my mother?"
"Leah Vale."
"Where is she?"
Shaw's expression softened.
"She died eleven years ago."
I looked down.
For twenty-four years, I'd lived in a mansion with a woman who sometimes treated me like a stranger.
All that time, another woman had been alive somewhere in the same state.
A woman who might have wondered what happened to her baby.
"Did she know I was alive?"
Shaw didn't answer immediately.
Then she said, "We have reason to believe she did."
Something cold moved through my chest.
"Why didn't she come for me?"
Shaw turned the folder around.
Inside was a letter.
Dated thirteen years earlier.
Addressed to:
Samuel Daniel Vale.
The handwriting was unfamiliar.
I touched the paper.
"Is this from her?"
"Yes."
"Why do you have it?"
"It was recovered from Eleanor's personal safe."
I looked at the first line.
My sweet boy,
The words blurred.
I blinked hard.
Then I read the next sentence.
I have watched you grow up from a distance, and every birthday I have had to remind myself that staying away is the only gift I can give you.
I stopped.
My hand was shaking.
Shaw waited.
I read the rest.
It wasn't long.
Only two pages.
She wrote about watching me at a Little League game when I was eight.
About seeing me ride my bicycle down the street when I was ten.
About a school Christmas concert where I had forgotten the words to the second verse of a song.
I remembered that concert.
I remembered looking out at the audience.
I remembered seeing a woman in a blue coat standing near the back doors.
She had been crying.
I had thought she was somebody's mother.
I looked up.
"She was there?"
Shaw nodded.
"Yes."
"She was there and I didn't know?"
"I'm sorry."
I bent over the letter.
For the first time that night, I cried.
Not because I'd lost my money.
Not because Richard had humiliated me.
Because somewhere in my childhood, a woman had stood in the back of a school auditorium watching her son sing.
And I'd never known she was mine.
When I could finally speak, I asked, "What happened to her?"
Shaw opened her mouth.
Then her phone rang.
She checked the screen.
Her face changed.
"Excuse me."
She stepped into the hallway.
I heard her say, "When?"
A pause.
"Are you certain?"
Another pause.
Then her voice sharpened.
"Lock down the hospital records. Nobody accesses that system without my authorization."
She returned a moment later.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She stood beside the table.
"Saint Catherine's Hospital just reported a fire in its records annex."
I stared at her.
"Grandma's hospital?"
"Yes."
"Was anybody hurt?"
"We don't know yet."
"Was she there?"
Shaw didn't answer quickly enough.
I stood.
"Was my grandmother there?"
She looked at me.
"Samuel, Eleanor Whitcomb was scheduled to meet one of our investigators there twenty minutes ago."
My stomach dropped.
"Did she get out?"
"We haven't confirmed."
Then Shaw's phone vibrated again.
A message appeared.
She read it.
And closed her eyes.
"What?" I demanded.
She turned the screen toward me.
It was a photograph of a burned room.
On the floor lay a silver walking cane.
My grandmother's cane.
The one with the carved ivory-colored handle.
Beside it was a scrap of paper.
May you like
Only three words remained legible.
HE FOUND OWEN.
