Chapter 23: The Fake Miscarriage

Then who was the father?

And where was *my* son?

The questions spiraled in my head as I drove back to the Hoard. The streetlights flickered overhead, intermittent pulses of clarity in the darkness. I had birthed a baby. I had held him. I had named him Leo.

But Edith controlled the hospital. She controlled the doctors. She controlled the records.

If she needed leverage... if she needed to ensure I never left her orbit...

Taking my biological child and replacing him with another baby would be the ultimate insurance policy. If I ever found out the truth about my own identity, she could hold my real son hostage.

And if Leo—the boy I was raising, the boy dying in the hospital—wasn't mine...

Then who was he?

I pulled into the driveway of the Victorian. Ben's truck was already there. He was waiting on the porch, a crowbar in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said as I climbed the steps.

"I think I've seen a lot of them," I said. "Ben, we need to find Clara's diaries. All of them. Not just the one from the nursery."

"I thought you said she hid things in the encyclopedias?"

"She did. But there has to be more. Clara was a hoarder, but she was also a chronicler. She wrote everything down because nobody would listen to her speak."

We went inside. The house felt different tonight. Not empty. Watchful.

We started in the library. It was a maze of books, stacked floor to ceiling. I pulled down the encyclopedias first. *A-C*. *D-F*.

Nothing.

"Check the hollow ones," I said. "She liked to hide things inside things."

Ben started tapping the spines of the older books. I went to the desk. It was buried under a mountain of junk mail and old *TV Guides*. I swept them onto the floor.

The desk surface was scarred and stained. I opened the drawers. Pens. Rubber bands. A dead mouse.

And a set of keys.

I picked them up. They were old, tarnished brass.

"Ben," I said. "What do these open?"

He looked over. "Skeleton keys. Could be anything. Interior doors. Cabinets. The attic."

"The attic," I whispered.

We hadn't been up there yet. The stairs were blocked by a wall of furniture—old dressers, broken chairs, a mattress stained with something brown.

"We need to clear the stairs," I said.

It took us an hour. We heaved and sweated, dragging the heavy oak pieces down the hallway. My muscles burned, but the physical pain was a relief. It was real. Unlike my life.

Finally, the path was clear.

We climbed the stairs. The air grew hotter, thicker. The smell of dust and dry wood filled my nose.

The attic door was locked.

I tried the keys. The first two didn't fit. The third one slid in, but wouldn't turn.

"Let me," Ben said.

He jiggled the key, applying gentle pressure.

*Click.*

The door swung open with a groan of rusted hinges.

We stepped inside.

The attic was vast, running the full length of the house. And it was full. But not with trash.

It was full of cribs.

Dozens of them. Rows and rows of white cribs, stacked like cordwood. And high chairs. And strollers. And boxes of baby clothes.

"My god," Ben whispered. "It's a warehouse."

I walked down the aisle between the cribs. They were all identical. All white. All pristine.

"Why?" I asked. "Why would she have so many?"

"Maybe she was buying them for the babies she... acquired?" Ben suggested.

"No," I said. "These are all the same model. The same year."

I looked at the manufacturer's stamp on one of the cribs. *1988.*

They were all from 1988.

Edith hadn't just bought one crib for the baby she stole. She had bought an entire inventory.

"She was trying to hide the purchase," I realized. "She bought fifty cribs so that one purchase wouldn't stand out. She made it look like... like a charitable donation. Or a bulk order for a hospital."

I reached the end of the row. There was a trunk there, an old steamer trunk with leather straps.

It wasn't locked.

I opened it.

Inside were files. Hundreds of them. Manila folders, each labeled with a date.

*June 1988.*

*July 1988.*

*August 1988.*

I pulled out the folder for *June 1988*.

It was empty.

I pulled out *July*. Empty.

*August*. Empty.

I went through the whole box. Every single folder was empty.

"She cleaned it out," I said. "She knew we would look."

"Sarah," Ben said. He was standing by the window, looking at something on the floor. "Come here."

I walked over.

Lying on the floorboards, half-hidden by a stack of high chairs, was a book.

It wasn't a diary. It was a photo album. A cheap, plastic one from a drugstore.

I picked it up. It was sticky with heat and age.

I opened it.

The photos inside weren't posed. They weren't professional. They were blurry, candid shots taken with a cheap camera.

And they were all of the same baby.

A baby boy.

He was tiny, red-faced, screaming in some shots, sleeping in others.

But it was the background that made my blood run cold.

The photos weren't taken in a nursery. They weren't taken in a hospital.

They were taken in a basement.

I could see the stone walls. The dirt floor. The iron door in the background.

And in one photo, dated *June 20, 1988*, there was a woman holding the baby.

It wasn't Edith. And it wasn't Clara.

The woman had dark hair, pulled back in a messy ponytail. She looked exhausted, terrified.

And she was wearing a nurse's uniform.

I looked closer at the uniform. There was a name tag.

*Alice.*

I looked at Ben. He was staring at the photo, his face draining of color.

"That's her," he whispered. "That's my sister."

"She didn't disappear," I said. "She was here. She was the nanny. The jailer."

Ben grabbed the album from my hands. He flipped through the pages frantically.

"Where is she?" he demanded. "Where is she now?"

He turned to the last page.

There was no photo. Just a piece of paper, folded and tucked into the plastic sleeve.

It was a receipt. From a funeral home.

*Cremation Services: Alice Miller.*
*Date: September 1988.*
*Paid by: E. Sterling.*

Ben made a sound, a low, wounded noise in his throat. He dropped the album.

"She killed her," he whispered. "She killed my sister to keep the secret."

I stared at the receipt. *September 1988.* Three months after the birth.

Alice had taken care of the baby in the basement for three months. And then she was gone.

And the baby?

I looked at the photos scattered on the floor. The baby boy in the basement.

In the last photo, the one taken just before Alice died, the baby was holding something.

A blue pacifier.

With the name *Leo* written on it.

The baby in the basement *was* Leo. Clara's son.

Which meant the man I rescued... the man who claimed to be Leo...

He wasn't lying.

He was the boy in the pictures.

But if he was Leo... and I was the doctor's daughter...

Then who was the baby Edith brought home? Who was the baby she raised as *Mark*?

I looked at the empty folders in the trunk. The missing records.

And then I remembered the DNA test Mark showed me. *No Match to Edith Sterling.*

Mark wasn't Edith's biological son. We knew that.

But if he wasn't Clara's son either...

Then Edith had stolen *three* babies.

She kept one in the basement (Leo).

She raised one as her niece (Me).

And she raised one as her son (Mark).

But where did Mark come from?

I looked at the funeral receipt again.

*Alice Miller.*

Ben's sister.

She was nineteen. She was pregnant.

"Ben," I said gently. "You said Alice was pregnant when she disappeared."

He looked at me, tears streaming down his face. "Yeah. She was due in... in June. June of '88."

I looked at the photo of Alice holding the baby. She didn't look pregnant anymore.

"Ben," I whispered. "I think Mark is your nephew."