Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO DIDN’T EXIST
Brooke woke in St. Joseph’s Hospital with an IV in her arm and Travis asleep in the chair beside her.
His beige suit jacket was draped over Jonah’s empty bassinet.
For one terrible second, she thought the bassinet meant something had happened.
Then Travis lifted his head.
“Jonah’s in observation,” he said immediately. “He’s okay. They’re checking him because he cried so long and because Mom handled him roughly.”
Brooke’s chest tightened.
“Your mother.”
“I know.”
“No, Travis. You don’t.”
He stood and came to the bed.
His anger had cooled into something harder.
“What did you mean about the woman who didn’t exist?”
Brooke looked toward the door.
“Is she here?”
“Mom is at the police station.”
“Arrested?”
“Questioned. Not charged yet.”
Brooke closed her eyes.
“Then she’ll be out soon.”
“Reed has the recorder.”
“That may not be enough.”
“Brooke, tell me.”
She opened her eyes again.
Three weeks earlier, she explained, she had received a package with no return address. Inside was a silver baby bracelet engraved with the name ELIAS and a note written in block letters.
ASK LORRAINE WHAT HAPPENED IN 1989.
Brooke assumed it was some cruel prank.
Then she found Lorraine in the nursery holding the bracelet.
Lorraine said it belonged to a baby who had died decades ago.
But when Brooke asked whose baby, Lorraine denied ever seeing it.
“She told me postpartum hormones were making me paranoid,” Brooke said. “Then the bracelet disappeared.”
Travis frowned.
“You never told me.”
“I tried. Twice. Both times she interrupted. Then she convinced you I needed more rest.”
He flinched.
Brooke continued.
A week later, the first recorder appeared beneath the changing table.
Not that one.
A smaller one.
When Brooke found it, she heard six minutes of Lorraine speaking to someone in the nursery.
A woman.
“She said, ‘You promised you would never come back.’”
“What did the woman say?”
“That Jonah had the same eyes as Elias.”
Travis stepped back.
The room seemed to shrink around him.
“Who is Elias?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you save the recording?”
“I tried.”
Her voice cracked.
Lorraine had walked into the room.
She seized the recorder, called Brooke unstable, then later told Travis that Brooke had been hearing voices.
Travis remembered.
He had defended his mother.
Not fully.
Not loudly.
But enough.
He had told Brooke to rest.
He had told her grief and blood loss could distort memory.
Now shame rose in him like sickness.
“Why was there another recorder?”
Brooke looked at him.
“Because I bought it.”
He stared.
“I wanted proof. I taped it under the table yesterday morning. I thought your mother might come back and threaten me again.”
“Again?”
Brooke’s gaze lowered.
“She said if I kept asking about Elias, she would make sure everyone believed I was dangerous to Jonah.”
Travis gripped the rail of the hospital bed.
“And today?”
“She came after you left for Denver. She said you had signed temporary custody papers giving her control if I became medically unfit.”
“I signed no such thing.”
“I know that now.”
“She forged them?”
“I think so.”
A knock came at the door.
Sergeant Reed entered carrying a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was the recorder.
“We recovered several audio files,” he said. “Most are from today.”
Travis stepped closer.
“Did it record everything?”
“Enough to contradict your mother’s version.”
Brooke released a breath.
“But there’s more,” Reed said.
He placed a printed transcript on the bed.
One line had been highlighted.
LORRAINE: IF TRAVIS FINDS OUT WHAT I DID TO HIS BROTHER, I LOSE EVERYTHING.
Travis did not blink.
“My brother?”
Reed watched him carefully.
“Mrs. Calder claims she was speaking metaphorically.”
Brooke looked at Travis.
He looked back at the transcript.
“I don’t have a brother.”
Reed’s silence lasted too long.
Then he said, “Your father is on his way here.”
Travis turned.
“My father is dead.”
Reed shook his head once.
“No, Mr. Calder.”
He set another photograph on the blanket.
It showed an older man outside the Phoenix police station less than an hour earlier.
Gray hair.
Lean face.
A scar along his jaw.
Travis knew that face from one framed portrait in Lorraine’s study—the portrait she had always said was of her late cousin.
Reed said, “His name is Owen Mercer.”
May you like
Travis felt the floor disappear beneath him.
“He says he is your biological father.”
