Chapter 13 - CATHERINE’S SECRET

Catherine sat across from me.

“I was pregnant before I disappeared. I knew that.”

I waited.

“But I had discovered something else.”

She reached into the old handbag she had carried when she escaped.

From a hidden seam, she removed a tiny folded document wrapped in plastic.

A laboratory report.

“Your mother had been secretly testing you.”

“Testing me for what?”

“Paternity.”

I stared at her.

Catherine shook her head.

“Not Penelope’s paternity. Yours.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“My father was Thomas Kincaid.”

“Yes.”

“But Daria was afraid a DNA test would show she wasn’t your biological mother.”

Silence.

Catherine explained.

Months before she vanished, she found records showing Daria had given birth to a stillborn son.

Three days later, infant Samuel Kincaid appeared in the family records.

No hospital transfer documents.

No adoption papers.

No birth certificate with a doctor’s signature.

Only money.

A lot of it.

Naomi leaned forward.

“You think Samuel was illegally adopted?”

Catherine nodded.

“Thomas knew. Daria didn’t want anyone else to know.”

“Why would that matter now?”

Marcus answered.

“Because Thomas’s family trust gives succession rights to his biological descendants. If Samuel is Thomas’s son but not Daria’s, she has no maternal claim over the trust.”

My mind raced.

“Then who was my mother?”

Catherine looked at me with painful hesitation.

“I don’t know.”

Naomi ordered immediate independent DNA testing.

The result took six hours.

Thomas’s stored medical sample confirmed he was my biological father.

Daria was not my biological mother.

I read the result three times.

The woman who had controlled my entire life had lied about the first fact of my existence.

Then Naomi received another call.

“We found Samuel’s original birth certificate.”

“Where?”

“Church archive outside Bellweather.”

A photograph arrived.

Mother: ELENA MARSH.

I had never heard the name.

Marcus had.

His face drained of color.

“Samuel... Elena Marsh was a housekeeper at the Kincaid estate.”

“What happened to her?”

Marcus looked toward Naomi.

“She disappeared thirty-eight years ago.”

Daria had not just stolen money.

May you like

My Son Sat There While His Wife Slapped My 4-Year-Old Granddaughter Hold...

MY SON WATCHED HIS WIFE HIT MY FOUR-YEAR-OLD GRANDDAUGHTER—BUT WHAT LILY WHISPERED NEXT MADE MY BLOOD RUN COLD.My four-year-old gr...

**My Wife Secretly Unplugged the Nursery Camera, Then Approached My 6-Mo...

My Wife Secretly Unplugged the Nursery Camera—Then I Saw Her Standing Over My 6-Month-Old Son With a Red-Hot Iron. But What She Sa...

I Came Home Early and Found My 5-Year-Old Daughter Eating Scraps Beside...

I thought I was coming home to an ordinary dinner.Instead, I found my five-year-old daughter sitting on the kitchen floor beside t...

She had stolen a child.

Me.