Chapter 9: The Man Margaret Never Named
Margaret read the DNA report three times.
“That’s impossible.”
Detective Brooks placed a sealed envelope beside it.
The laboratory had compared Nathan’s DNA with preserved samples from Thomas’s medical records.
No paternal match.
Emily stared at her mother.
“Who is Nathan’s father?”
Margaret stood and walked toward the window.
For twenty years, she had hidden one truth even from herself.
Before her marriage to Thomas began to collapse, Margaret had briefly separated from him.
During that time, she reconnected with Daniel Mercer, her college sweetheart.
“It happened once,” she said. “Thomas and I reconciled before I knew I was pregnant.”
“Did Dad know?” Emily asked.
“Not at first.”
Margaret remembered Thomas’s strange anger during the pregnancy.
His demand for a private paternity test.
His coldness after Nathan’s birth.
Charles had known because he handled the results.
Thomas discovered Nathan was not his son the day before the kidnapping.
The temporary abduction had not been merely about stopping a divorce.
It was punishment.
Thomas wanted Margaret to believe her baby had vanished because she had betrayed him.
Nathan’s face hardened.
“So he did want me gone.”
Margaret shook her head.
“The recording said he wanted you returned.”
“After he regretted it.”
There was no comforting answer.
Daniel Mercer was still alive.
He owned a small architecture firm in Boston.
He had never married.
When police contacted him, he flew to Chicago the same day.
Nathan met him in a private room.
Daniel was sixty-four, gray-haired, and visibly terrified.
He looked at Nathan’s face and sat down without being asked.
“You have Margaret’s eyes,” he whispered.
Nathan remained standing.
“Did you know about me?”
“No.”
Daniel’s answer was immediate.
“Margaret sent me a letter twenty years ago. She said the baby had died.”
Margaret recoiled.
“I never sent that.”
Daniel produced the letter.
The signature looked like hers.
Charles had forged it.
Daniel had spent twenty years believing his son was dead.
Nathan stared at another stolen future.
Then Daniel said something no one expected.
“I came to Chicago after receiving the letter.”
Margaret looked at him.
“You did?”
“I attended the funeral.”
“There was no funeral.”
Daniel’s face changed.
“Yes, there was.”
He had stood outside a private burial service arranged by Thomas and Charles.
A tiny coffin had been placed in the ground.
Empty.
Detective Brooks ordered the grave opened.
Inside the coffin, investigators found no body.
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Only a bloodstained nurse’s uniform.
And a name badge belonging to Evelyn Cross.
