CHAPTER 3 — THE WOMAN WHO STOLE A LIFE
Victoria Reed did not deny it.
She simply stood there, frozen beneath three hundred pairs of accusing eyes.
Nathan walked toward her slowly.
"Tell me they're wrong."
She couldn't.
Instead, tears rolled silently down her face.
"I wanted a child more than anything," she whispered.
"But I could never have one."
The chapel remained deathly still.
Victoria confessed that twenty years earlier she had worked as a volunteer at St. Anne's Hospital.
The night Margaret's son disappeared, she found the frightened toddler wandering alone after a power outage caused chaos throughout the maternity ward.
She should have called the police.
She should have returned him.
Instead...
She drove away.
She changed his name.
Forged adoption papers with the help of a corrupt official.
And raised him as her own son.
"I told myself I was saving him," Victoria sobbed.
"But every birthday... every Christmas... I knew I had stolen another mother's life."
Margaret collapsed into a pew, unable to stand.
Twenty years of unanswered prayers finally had an answer.
Nathan stepped backward, unable to recognize the woman who had raised him.
"You lied to me... every single day."
Victoria nodded.
"I loved you."
Nathan's eyes filled with tears.
"I believe you."
He paused.
"But love built on a lie destroys everyone."
Police officers quietly entered the chapel.
No one resisted.
Victoria extended her hands before they even asked.
As the handcuffs closed around her wrists, she looked at Margaret.
"I'm sorry."
Margaret answered through tears.
"I may forgive you someday."
She looked toward Nathan.
"But I can never forgive what was taken from us."
Victoria was led away.
May you like
Not as a mother.
But as the woman whose decision had stolen twenty years from an entire family.
