Chapter 3 - WHAT ELEANOR STERLING BURIED
By eight the next morning, I was sitting across from Samuel Mercer.
Adrian arrived seconds later.
I slid the document toward him.
He read it.
His face hardened.
"My mother tested them?"
"Apparently."
"Without your permission?"
"I never knew."
Samuel examined the document.
"This is genuine."
"How?"
"Charles used this laboratory for family medical screening."
Adrian looked at the date.
"Nine years ago."
Samuel nodded.
"Your mother knew conclusively."
The implications were staggering.
This wasn't suspicion.
This wasn't family prejudice.
Eleanor had scientific proof that Adrian was the father.
And she still kept us apart.
Adrian wanted to confront her immediately.
I stopped him.
"If someone is planning to falsify tomorrow's results, confronting her tells her we know."
He stared at me.
The old Adrian would have rushed ahead.
This one sat back down.
"Then what do you suggest, Colonel?"
I almost smiled.
Almost.
"Independent testing."
Samuel arranged it.
Samples were collected that morning with chain-of-custody documentation.
Adrian insisted each child understand what was happening.
Nathan asked the hardest question.
"If he's our dad, why wasn't he there?"
Nobody answered immediately.
Then Adrian crouched in front of him.
"Because I made a terrible mistake about your mother, and people I trusted made sure I didn't discover the truth."
Nathan studied him.
"Did you try to find us?"
Adrian swallowed.
"No."
"Then they didn't do all of it."
Silence.
I watched Adrian absorb the blow.
"No," he said. "They didn't."
That answer changed something in Nathan.
Not forgiveness.
But perhaps the beginning of respect.
Later, Samuel took us back to Charles's secret room.
We searched the files.
Financial records showed payments from Eleanor to Vanessa.
Regular payments.
For ten years.
Vanessa hadn't merely helped once.
She had remained employed in some capacity.
Watching us.
Reporting.
Why?
We found the answer inside a folder marked CONTINGENCIES.
Eleanor believed I might someday use the children to claim Sterling assets.
She had spent years preparing to discredit me if I returned.
There were drafts of newspaper stories.
Statements from supposed witnesses.
Private investigator reports.
Even a fabricated narrative suggesting the children had multiple fathers.
Adrian read that one twice.
Then tore it in half.
"Don't," I said.
"What?"
"Destroy evidence."
He placed it back together.
"Right."
I watched him.
"You really have changed."
He looked at me.
"So have you."
"That was necessary."
His expression showed he understood exactly what I meant.
Samuel found another ledger.
A payment had been made to someone at the hospital where the children were born.
That explained the newborn photograph.
My anger became something colder.
They had invaded the most vulnerable days of my life.
But the ledger contained another name.
DR. MATTHEW REEVES.
I knew it.
My former obstetrician.
The doctor who had treated me during the first months of pregnancy.
Samuel called him.
No answer.
Adrian searched online.
Reeves had retired to Charleston.
We drove there.
He opened the door, saw me, and nearly shut it again.
Adrian stopped it with his hand.
"Dr. Reeves."
"I have nothing to say."
"You took money from my family."
His face went gray.
We sat in his living room ten minutes later.
Reeves confessed.
Eleanor had contacted him shortly after learning about the pregnancy.
She wanted confirmation.
He gave it.
Illegal.
Unethical.
He knew.
Then came something I hadn't expected.
"She wanted you declared medically unfit for deployment," Reeves said.
I stared.
"What?"
"She wanted documentation suggesting the pregnancy had caused psychological instability."
Adrian stood.
"My mother tried to ruin her career?"
Reeves nodded.
"But I refused."
One decent choice in a collection of terrible ones.
"Then why did she keep paying you?" I asked.
His eyes lowered.
"Because I did something else."
I waited.
"I told her where you delivered."
My hands clenched.
"That's how they found us."
"Yes."
Adrian looked ready to hit him.
I didn't need that.
"Anything else?"
Reeves hesitated.
That hesitation told me there was.
"After the birth, Mrs. Sterling asked whether there was any possibility the children could have different biological fathers."
I stared at him.
"Five babies conceived naturally within the same pregnancy?"
"I explained how extraordinarily unlikely that would be."
"What did she say?"
"She said unlikely wasn't impossible."
Adrian whispered something under his breath.
Reeves continued.
"Then she arranged DNA testing."
"The test from nine years ago."
He nodded.
"All five were Adrian's."
There it was.
Confirmation.
Again.
Adrian sat down.
Reeves looked at me.
"There's something else."
Of course.
"There always is," I said.
He went to a cabinet.
He returned with a small sealed envelope.
"I kept this because I was afraid."
Inside was a copy of a letter from Eleanor.
Matthew,
The biological results must never reach Adrian. Charles agrees that disclosure would cause irreparable damage.
I read it twice.
Charles agrees.
Adrian saw it.
"My father agreed?"
Reeves looked uncomfortable.
"At that time, yes."
Charles hadn't merely discovered the truth later.
He had known much earlier than his recording suggested.
The confession itself contained a lie.
We drove back in silence.
At Sterling property, Adrian went directly to the cemetery.
I followed.
He stood over his father's grave.
"You lied again," he said.
I stayed several feet away.
He wasn't speaking to me.
"I buried you yesterday thinking at least you finally told the truth."
His voice cracked.
"You couldn't even do that."
I wanted to comfort him.
I didn't know whether I had the right.
Then he turned.
"How did you do it?"
"What?"
"Raise five children alone."
"I wasn't completely alone."
"But I wasn't there."
"No."
"How?"
I thought about it.
Military childcare.
Friends.
Neighbors.
Rebecca.
Sleepless nights.
Budget spreadsheets.
Five car seats.
Five fevers.
Five kindergarten forms.
One mother pretending she wasn't terrified.
"You stop asking whether you can do it," I said. "You just do the next thing."
He nodded.
"I missed everything."
"Yes."
No comfort.
No lie.
He deserved truth now.
Even when it hurt.
That afternoon, the independent laboratory called Samuel.
Preliminary confirmation.
Adrian was the biological father of all five children.
Probability greater than 99.99 percent.
He asked permission before telling them.
I appreciated that.
We gathered in the cottage.
Adrian stood before five children who had spent their entire lives without him.
"I am your biological father."
Sophie looked at him.
"We know."
Everyone laughed.
Even me.
It broke the tension.
Then Benjamin asked, "Are you going to stay?"
Adrian looked at me.
I didn't answer for him.
"I want to," he said. "But that's something your mother and I have to figure out. And something each of you gets a say in too."
Good answer.
Nathan remained skeptical.
But Clara asked Adrian whether he liked baseball.
Emily wanted to know whether he had pets.
Sophie asked why he wore a white suit to a funeral.
For twenty minutes, they were simply children meeting someone new.
Then Vanessa arrived.
Alone.
Her mascara was smeared.
She carried a flash drive.
"I need protection."
Adrian stared at her.
"From whom?"
"Your mother."
I almost dismissed it as drama.
Then Vanessa held up the drive.
"Charles wasn't the only Sterling keeping records."
"What is that?" I asked.
"Everything Eleanor made me do."
"Why bring it now?"
"Because she knows Charles left files."
Adrian folded his arms.
"And?"
Vanessa looked toward the road.
"She's destroying evidence."
Samuel took the drive.
Vanessa grabbed his wrist.
"Don't put that into any Sterling computer."
He stopped.
"Why?"
"Because she'll know."
Adrian's voice hardened.
"Know what?"
Vanessa looked at him.
"That I copied the private archive."
Samuel used an isolated laptop.
The drive contained hundreds of files.
Emails.
Payments.
Photographs.
Recordings.
Then we found a folder labeled G.V. FINAL.
Vanessa whispered, "I never opened that."
I did.
Inside was a single audio file dated ten years earlier.
The night Adrian threw me out.
I pressed play.
Eleanor's voice came first.
Then Charles's.
Then Vanessa's.
But a fourth person spoke.
A man's voice.
I recognized it instantly.
Adrian did too.
He looked at me.
"That's impossible."
The recording continued.
The fourth person laughed.
Then said my name.
The man speaking was the officer I had supposedly had an affair with.
May you like
The man who had died nine years ago.
And according to the timestamp, he had been inside Sterling House the night my marriage ended.
