Chapter 9 - THE GATE
I ran barefoot down the front steps.
“Close the gate!” I shouted into the security radio.
The iron gates at the end of the drive began to move.
Margaret’s sedan accelerated.
Instead, she stopped inches before the closing bars.
I reached the car just as the rear door opened.
A young nanny I had never seen stepped out, Noah screaming in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “Mrs. Reeves said you approved it.”
I took Noah from her.
Margaret stayed behind the wheel.
She rolled down the window.
“You are making a spectacle of this family.”
“You took my son.”
“I was protecting him from you.”
“By driving away after he was pushed down the stairs?”
Her jaw tightened.
“You hit me.”
“And I’ll answer for that. You’ll answer for everything else.”
She leaned closer.
“You think one lab report changes who you are?”
“What does that mean?”
For a moment, I saw triumph return to her face.
“You still don’t know.”
“Know what?”
She looked at Noah.
“Ask your father why he changed the Continuity Clause three days before he died.”
“My father is dead.”
“Then ask Leonard.”
Police cars arrived before she could leave.
Ruiz ordered Margaret out of the sedan.
Margaret complied with the cold dignity of a woman entering a board meeting.
As an officer escorted her toward the house, she passed me and whispered, “The paper in your pocket proves Noah is your son. It does not prove you are Robert’s.”
I went still.
Margaret smiled.
Then she walked away.
Later that night, in my father’s locked records room, I found a sealed envelope taped beneath the desk.
My name was written across it.
Inside was a hospital bracelet from the day I was born.
May you like
And a letter from my father that began:
Daniel, if Margaret ever questions your blood, it means she has run out of other lies.
