Chapter 7 - THE OTHER CHILD
I did not sleep.
By morning, every possible meaning of the anonymous message had passed through my mind.
Andrew had another child.
Andrew believed he had another child.
Someone was using a child to blackmail him.
Or Patricia’s obsession with sons had finally produced the secret she wanted most.
At six forty-five, Marcus called.
“The storage unit is leased to Raymond Pierce’s law firm,” he said. “That complicates access.”
“Can they destroy everything?”
“We sent a preservation demand. Our investigator photographed the visible contents before leaving. If evidence disappears now, there will be consequences.”
“What about the anonymous messages?”
“The number is routed through an encrypted service.”
“Can we trace it?”
“Possibly, but not quickly.”
I watched Sophia sleeping beside Chloe.
The label on the box remained fixed in my mind.
SOPHIA PATERNITY.
“Do you think Andrew questioned whether Sophia was his?”
“There has never been any reason to question it.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
Marcus paused.
“I think Andrew collected information he believed could be useful in custody or divorce proceedings. Whether he believed it was true is another matter.”
At eight, Andrew’s supervised call with the girls began.
Rebecca arranged for a family therapist to monitor the conversation remotely.
I sat across the room, outside the camera’s view.
Andrew appeared on the tablet screen wearing a clean shirt and a practiced smile.
“Hey, princesses.”
Neither girl answered.
He leaned closer.
“Daddy misses you.”
Chloe looked at Sophia before whispering, “Okay.”
Andrew’s smile tightened.
“I heard you’re staying with Aunt Natalie.”
“Yes,” Sophia said.
“Are you having fun?”
“We’re not on vacation.”
The therapist wrote something.
Andrew glanced offscreen, probably toward Raymond.
“Sophia, I’m sorry dinner became confusing.”
“It wasn’t confusing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Grandma took our food because we’re girls. You told Mom to stop being dramatic.”
“That isn’t exactly what happened.”
“I was there.”
Andrew’s expression changed.
For years, he had spoken around our daughters rather than to them. He assumed childhood meant blindness.
“Sophia, adults sometimes have traditions children don’t understand.”
“Taking Chloe’s dinner is a bad tradition.”
Chloe nodded.
“I was hungry.”
Andrew rubbed his forehead.
“Grandma did not mean to hurt you.”
“She did,” Sophia said.
“She loves you.”
“Then why does she want a boy instead?”
Silence.
The therapist allowed several seconds to pass.
Andrew looked toward someone offscreen again.
“Your grandmother comes from a different generation.”
“Mom said being old doesn’t make being cruel okay.”
Andrew’s eyes hardened.
“I need you to stop repeating everything your mother says.”
“I thought this call was for us,” Sophia replied.
The therapist intervened.
“Mr. Vance, please keep the conversation focused on reassuring the children.”
“I am trying, but Lauren has clearly been discussing adult issues with them.”
I remained silent.
He could not see me, but he knew I was listening.
Chloe leaned toward the screen.
“Daddy, are you ashamed because I’m a girl?”
The question broke whatever performance Andrew had prepared.
His face changed.
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you help me?”
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Chloe began crying.
The therapist ended the call.
Andrew shouted my name before the screen went dark.
Sophia wrapped her arms around her sister.
“I told you,” she whispered. “Mommy isn’t ashamed of us.”
I turned away so they would not see me cry.
At ten, the videographer finally released the banquet recording under court order.
The footage was clearer than I expected.
Multiple cameras had captured the room from different angles. A microphone near the head table recorded Andrew’s conversation with Patricia ten minutes before she approached our daughters.
Rebecca, Marcus, and I listened together.
Patricia’s voice came first.
“If she reacts, Raymond says witnesses need to describe her as threatening.”
Andrew lowered his voice.
“What if she just leaves?”
“Then you say she removed the children irrationally.”
“I don’t like involving the girls.”
“You should have thought about that before marrying a woman who refuses to give you a son.”
Andrew looked toward our table.
“I’m not staying married to her.”
“Then stop behaving like you need her permission.”
The recording continued.
Raymond joined them.
He reminded Andrew not to mention the custody petition until after I reacted.
Then Madison appeared briefly at the edge of the frame.
Patricia touched her arm and said, “By next year, you’ll be sitting here where you belong.”
The evidence was devastating.
Not because it showed an argument.
Because it proved planning.
Rebecca immediately submitted it to the court.
The family declarations describing my supposed spontaneous breakdown were now contradicted by footage showing they expected and intended to provoke a reaction.
At noon, Patricia posted that the recording had been taken out of context.
No one believed her.
The same relatives who ignored my daughters began issuing carefully worded statements about misunderstanding the situation.
One aunt wrote that she had always supported girls.
She had laughed when Patricia gave me a mop for Christmas.
Andrew’s younger brother Nolan called me.
I almost declined, but Marcus suggested answering.
“I didn’t know,” Nolan said.
“You were at the table.”
“I mean about the plan.”
“You watched Patricia remove their food.”
“I thought Andrew would handle it.”
“He did. He blamed me.”
Nolan exhaled.
“I’m sorry.”
“For which part?”
“All of it.”
I said nothing.
“I also need to tell you something,” he continued. “About the storage unit.”
My body became still.
“You sent the messages?”
“No. But I know who might have.”
“Who?”
“Our cousin Rebecca Vance. Not your attorney Rebecca. My cousin.”
I remembered her. She worked as a nurse in Baltimore and rarely attended family events.
“Why would she know about Andrew’s files?”
“She dated Raymond’s brother. She heard things.”
“What things?”
Nolan lowered his voice.
“Andrew has been paying support for a child in Maryland.”
“A son?”
“Yes.”
The word landed without surprise.
Of course it was a son.
“How old?”
“Seven.”
Seven years.
Andrew had hidden a child for most of our marriage.
“Who is the mother?”
“A woman named Claire Donovan. She worked for the printing business before Dad died.”
“Does Patricia know?”
“She arranged the payments.”
I closed my eyes.
The family had spent years condemning me for failing to give Andrew a son while secretly supporting the son he had fathered with another woman.
“Why is the file labeled Sophia Paternity?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is Andrew the boy’s father?”
“He believes he is.”
Believes.
Not knows.
“What does that mean?”
“Claire was also involved with someone else.”
“Who?”
Nolan did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “Our father.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Andrew and his father had both been involved with the same woman.
The boy Patricia treated as Andrew’s secret heir might actually be Andrew’s half-brother.
The Vance obsession with bloodlines had created a secret even they could not explain.
“What does Sophia have to do with this?”
Nolan took a breath.
“Andrew used Sophia’s DNA sample to compare family markers.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“How did he get her DNA?”
“Remember when the school held that ancestry project last year?”
Sophia had brought home a family-history kit. Andrew volunteered to help her collect a cheek swab for what I believed was a harmless classroom exercise.
“He used our daughter’s DNA without my consent?”
“I think so.”
“For what?”
“To determine whether the boy was closely related to her.”
A direct father-son comparison would have answered whether Andrew was the boy’s father.
But Andrew had apparently avoided using his own DNA.
Perhaps he feared creating a record.
Instead, he used Sophia as an indirect match.
“What were the results?”
“I don’t know. But after the test, Patricia started calling the boy her grandson.”
That suggested the child was more closely related to Andrew than to his father.
Unless the test had been misunderstood.
Or manipulated.
I ended the call and told Marcus everything.
“This now involves unauthorized genetic testing of a minor,” he said. “We need documentation before drawing conclusions.”
An email arrived from the Monterrey lender.
Andrew had responded to the payment demand.
Instead of paying, he claimed I had authorized the loan and was responsible for the balance.
Attached was another document bearing my signature.
This one was dated eleven months earlier.
The signature looked authentic.
Too authentic.
I examined the witness section.
Patricia had signed it.
Marcus read the certification twice.
“Your mother-in-law personally witnessed what appears to be a forged guarantee.”
The affair.
The custody plot.
The secret child.
The forged documents.
Patricia was no longer merely a cruel woman protecting her son.
She was a participant.
At three, law enforcement obtained authority to secure the storage unit while the competing ownership and privilege issues were reviewed.
The metal cabinet remained closed.
But one of the visible boxes contained a handwritten ledger.
Payments to Claire Donovan appeared every month.
Beneath several entries were notes in Patricia’s handwriting.
For Alexander.
The boy had a name.
Alexander.
Seven years old.
The same age difference that separated Sophia and Chloe.
May you like
At the bottom of the final ledger page, Patricia had written one sentence.
Once Lauren is gone, bring him into the family properly.
