Chapter 8 - The Transfer Made on My Eighteenth Birthday
Valerie pushed the DNA envelope away and said:
“I never gave anyone a sample.”
Samuel placed a twenty-year-old consent form beside it.
A handwritten notation appeared under Valerie's maiden name.
MATERNAL COMPARISON REQUESTED.
That was when Rebecca whispered:
“Diane wasn't the only sister tested.”
Valerie stood.
“No.”
I had never heard fear in her voice like that.
“Absolutely not.”
Samuel remained calm.
“These are historical documents. I'm not saying the conclusions are reliable by modern standards.”
Valerie looked at Rebecca.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Why is my name there?”
“Because Ruth asked for testing.”
Grandma.
Again.
Every hidden path seemed to lead back to her.
I opened the envelope.
Old testing.
Not modern DNA sequencing.
Blood markers and early parentage testing.
The report listed probabilities.
Diane Carter: excluded as biological mother of Infant H.
Rebecca Hollis: consistent.
Robert Carter: consistent as father.
Then a notation involving Valerie.
I read it twice.
Valerie Morgan: consistent with maternal biological relationship as close relative.
“Aunt,” Samuel explained.
Valerie sat down.
“That just means I'm Rebecca's—”
She stopped.
Everyone stared.
“What?” I asked.
Valerie looked at Rebecca.
Rebecca was crying again.
“No,” Valerie whispered.
Rebecca nodded.
I didn't understand.
Then I remembered Grandma Ruth had two daughters.
Diane and Valerie.
Rebecca wasn't one of them.
Or I hadn't thought she was.
Valerie covered her mouth.
“My father?”
Rebecca's voice trembled.
“Yes.”
The secret expanded again.
Rebecca was Valerie and Diane's half-sister.
Grandma Ruth's husband—my grandfather—had fathered another daughter years earlier.
Rebecca.
Which meant my mother, Aunt Valerie, and Rebecca were sisters.
Dad had fathered children with two sisters.
I wanted to leave the planet.
“This is insane.”
Nobody disagreed.
Valerie looked physically ill.
“Did Ruth know?”
“Eventually,” Rebecca said.
“When?”
“After Madeline was born.”
“So that's why she helped with the trust.”
Rebecca nodded.
“She felt guilty.”
Valerie began crying.
Not loudly.
“She never told me.”
“She wanted to.”
“Everyone wanted to.”
Valerie laughed through tears.
“That seems to be this family's favorite sentence.”
I looked at Rebecca.
“What was the second twenty-four-thousand-dollar withdrawal?”
Her expression changed.
“I don't know.”
“You knew the first?”
“Not at the time.”
“What happened when the house transferred to you?”
“Diane wanted the evidence I found.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“No.”
“So why did she transfer the property for one dollar?”
“Because I threatened to file the custody petition again.”
“At age nineteen?”
“You were legally an adult. It wasn't custody anymore.”
“What did you want?”
“To tell you.”
“And?”
“Diane begged me to wait.”
I stared at her.
“You agreed?”
“For six months.”
“Why?”
“Because she said you were struggling with anxiety at college.”
I almost laughed.
I wasn't.
Not beyond normal freshman stress.
“She lied.”
“I know that now.”
“Then what?”
“Lauren asked me to stop.”
My sister.
Biological daughter of the woman I called Mom.
Raised by Rebecca.
“Why?”
“She was terrified you would hate her.”
“For what?”
“For having the life she thought belonged to you.”
That stopped me.
Lauren had grown up in Asheville with Rebecca.
I had grown up in Charlotte with Diane and Robert.
Which life belonged to whom?
Neither.
Both.
There was no alternate universe that could be returned like a package.
I looked at the USB drive.
“I want to hear the recording.”
Rebecca nodded.
Ethan opened his laptop.
We moved to a private room at the back of the café.
The file was old.
Audio hissed.
Then my mother's younger voice.
Twenty-one years younger.
Still unmistakable.
“I can't give her back.”
A man's voice.
Dad.
“Diane.”
“I can't.”
“She isn't ours.”
“She is yours.”
Silence.
My stomach twisted.
Mom continued.
“I carried a baby for nine months while you were sleeping with her.”
Dad said something too low to hear.
Mom's voice rose.
“You made this. You made both of them. And now you expect me to hand this child to Rebecca and take hers like none of this happened?”
Dad: “Lauren is yours.”
Mom: “And Madeline is yours too.”
Dad: “They're both mine.”
Mom began crying.
Then came the sentence that changed everything.
“I don't want the baby who reminds me she won.”
I stopped the recording.
Nobody moved.
My chest hurt.
Lauren.
My mother didn't want Lauren because Lauren was biologically hers?
No.
She didn't want the baby she believed had been Rebecca's.
But at that moment she must have misunderstood which child was which.
I looked at Rebecca.
“She thought Lauren was yours.”
“Yes.”
“So she kept me because she thought I was hers?”
“No.”
“What?”
“The hospital labels were already corrected by then.”
My stomach dropped.
“She knew?”
“Yes.”
“She knew I was yours.”
“Yes.”
“Then what does that sentence mean?”
Rebecca wiped her eyes.
“She wasn't talking about biology.”
I waited.
“She was talking about which baby Robert loved.”
That made no sense.
“Babies were three days old.”
“Robert had already said he wanted to support you and me.”
I looked at Dad's absence as though he were standing there.
“He was choosing you.”
“Maybe.”
“So Mom kept me to punish you?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“I think it started that way.”
Started.
“What changed?”
“She loved you.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Because I knew it was true.
Whatever she had done, my mother had loved me.
She attended every recital.
Made soup when I was sick.
Drove four hours to surprise me after my first college breakup.
Love did not erase what she had done.
But wrongdoing didn't retroactively erase every loving thing either.
That was the terrible part.
People could be both.
I restarted the recording.
Dad: “We cannot do this.”
Mom: “It's already done.”
Dad: “Rebecca will fight.”
Mom: “Then let her.”
Dad: “And Lauren?”
Long silence.
Mom: “She'll be loved.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
The recording ended.
I stared at the screen.
Two babies assigned to adults by fear, betrayal, and arrogance.
Then kept there because changing it would expose everything.
I whispered, “I need to meet Lauren.”
Rebecca looked terrified.
“She knows you're coming eventually.”
“I need to meet her now.”
“She isn't in Asheville.”
“Where is she?”
Rebecca glanced at Ethan.
He suddenly looked uncomfortable.
I noticed.
“What?”
Nobody answered.
“Ethan?”
He looked at his mother.
Valerie frowned.
“Why are you looking at me?”
Ethan swallowed.
“Because I think I know who she is.”
The restaurant.
Rebecca had said her daughter was there.
My birthday dinner.
I mentally counted every woman at the table.
Relatives.
Friends.
One of Valerie's coworkers?
Then I remembered a young woman seated at the far end.
Twenty-one or twenty-two.
Long dark hair.
She had come with Ethan.
I assumed she was his friend.
She barely spoke.
She left before cake.
I stared at Ethan.
“The girl with you.”
His face answered.
“Her name is Lauren.”
My chest tightened.
“She was at my birthday dinner?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew?”
“Not everything.”
“How much?”
“She told me three months ago she thought we were related.”
“You brought her there?”
“She wanted to see you.”
“And nobody told me.”
“She was going to.”
“When?”
Ethan looked ashamed.
“After dinner.”
I stood.
“You all keep deciding when I get to know my own life.”
“Madeline—”
“No.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
Not Rebecca's this time.
A message.
Hi. It's Lauren. I'm outside.
I turned toward the café window.
A young woman stood across the street.
May you like
She had my mother's face.
And she was holding the same childhood photograph I kept on my nightstand.
