For several moments I was certain I had heard Margaret incorrectly.
“Michael’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Rachel?”
Margaret nodded.
“No.”
It came out automatically, not as disagreement but refusal.
Rachel had been part of our family for fourteen years.
I remembered the first time Michael brought her home from college. She had arrived carrying grocery-store flowers and spent twenty minutes helping Daniel repair a loose porch railing because she noticed the screws sitting on the steps.
Daniel had liked her immediately.
Too immediately?
The thought made me sick.
“Rachel’s mother is named Susan.”
“The woman who raised her is Susan.”
I stared.
Margaret continued carefully.
“Anna gave birth to Rachel when she was nineteen.”
“No.”
“She placed her for adoption.”
I gripped the back of a chair.
“Does Rachel know?”
“Yes.”
“Does Michael?”
“Yes.”
That stopped me.
“My son knows this?”
“He knows he was adopted by you and Daniel?”
The question made no sense.
I looked at her.
Then the world seemed to become perfectly still.
“What did you just say?”
Margaret’s face changed the instant she realized what I had heard.
“Ellen—”
“What did you say?”
She stepped toward me.
I backed away.
“Michael was adopted by me?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Oh, God.”
My hand struck the counter behind me.
I heard something fall into the sink.
“Michael is my biological son.”
Margaret’s silence was worse than any answer.
“I gave birth to him.”
“I know.”
“I was there.”
“I know.”
“I carried him for nine months.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you ask if he knew he was adopted?”
“I misspoke.”
“No.”
I moved around the table.
“You did not.”
She looked frightened now.
Good.
I wanted someone else frightened.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Daniel asked me specifically not to—”
“Daniel is dead.”
The words tore out of me.
“He does not get another vote.”
Margaret lowered herself into the chair.
I remained standing.
“Michael is your son,” she said slowly. “Biologically.”
I waited.
“But Daniel was not his biological father.”
The kitchen clock ticked.
One.
Two.
Three.
I began laughing.
I could not help it.
Not because anything was funny.
Because the alternative was screaming.
“That’s impossible.”
Margaret said nothing.
“I never slept with anyone else.”
“I know.”
The laughter stopped.
“What?”
“You never betrayed Daniel.”
“How would you know?”
“Because he knew too.”
I felt suddenly unsteady.
“He knew what?”
“That Michael could not have been his biological child.”
Every sound in the house sharpened.
The refrigerator motor.
Rainwater moving through a gutter.
A car passing outside.
“He was my husband.”
“Yes.”
“We conceived Michael.”
Margaret’s eyes held mine.
“Did you?”
I slapped the table.
“Enough.”
She flinched.
I hated myself for frightening her and did not care.
“Start making sense.”
Margaret took a long breath.
“In 1990, you and Daniel were trying for a second child.”
“Yes.”
I remembered.
Claire was two. I wanted children close in age.
Months passed.
Then a year.
Then tests.
“You went to a fertility clinic.”
My skin went cold.
St. Matthew’s.
The same hospital near the diner where Margaret recently met Daniel.
“Yes.”
“The doctors told you Daniel’s sperm count was very low.”
My mouth had gone dry.
“They said low. Not impossible.”
“What did the clinic recommend?”
I already knew.
“Insemination.”
Margaret waited.
“We used Daniel’s sample.”
“That is what you were told.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“Ellen—”
“No.”
“Years later, Daniel learned the clinic had made mistakes.”
I felt my knees weaken.
“What kind of mistakes?”
“Records. Samples.”
I sat because I no longer trusted my legs.
“Whose sample was used?”
Margaret did not answer immediately.
“Whose?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said Daniel wasn’t Michael’s father.”
“Because Daniel had testing done.”
“When?”
“After Michael and Rachel got engaged.”
My head snapped up.
“Why then?”
“Because Daniel recognized Rachel’s grandmother.”
“Susan?”
“No.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca’s mother.”
I could barely follow.
Margaret explained.
At Michael and Rachel’s engagement dinner, Susan had brought photographs. One showed Rachel as a newborn beside the couple who adopted her and, standing behind them, Anna.
Daniel recognized his daughter immediately.
He said nothing at dinner.
Of course he said nothing.
He came home beside me.
He went to bed beside me.
He woke the next morning and drank coffee at our kitchen table.
And apparently somewhere behind his ordinary face, our life had cracked open.
“He contacted Anna,” Margaret said.
“How?”
“He didn’t. Not then. He hired someone to confirm Rachel’s adoption history.”
I stared at the photograph of Michael.
“When he discovered Rachel was Anna’s daughter, why would that make him question Michael?”
“Because if Michael was his biological son, Michael and Rachel would be…”
She stopped.
Half-uncle and niece.
The words formed in my mind before she said them.
I stood so quickly the chair nearly tipped.
“Oh, my God.”
“That was Daniel’s fear.”
I covered my mouth.
Michael and Rachel had been engaged.
They were planning to marry.
Daniel realized his son might be marrying his biological granddaughter.
“He had a DNA test done,” Margaret said.
“How without Michael knowing?”
“He kept hair from a brush after Michael stayed here.”
I looked at her in disbelief.
“That sounds insane.”
“He was desperate.”
“And the result?”
“Daniel was not Michael’s biological father.”
My chest loosened and tightened at the same time.
“So Michael and Rachel aren’t related.”
“Not through Daniel.”
“What does through Daniel mean?”
“They are not biologically related as far as anyone knows.”
“As far as anyone knows?”
“Daniel never discovered the donor identity.”
“He wasn’t a donor.”
I heard my own voice become sharp.
“If the wrong sample was used without my consent, that man was not a donor to me.”
Margaret nodded.
“You’re right.”
I pressed my palms against my eyes.
A clinic error.
Was that what Daniel had hidden?
He must have known for twelve years.
Michael and Rachel had been married ten.
Two children.
Every holiday, every birthday, every Sunday dinner since their engagement—Daniel had carried this alone.
Then another question came.
“Why didn’t he tell me once he knew Rachel and Michael weren’t related?”
Margaret’s eyes lowered.
“Because the DNA test revealed something else.”
There was always something else.
I almost told her to leave.
Instead I whispered, “What?”
“Daniel requested a broader kinship analysis.”
“Why?”
“He wanted certainty.”
“About?”
“Whether Michael had any biological connection to the Morgan family.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
Margaret rubbed her thumb against her palm.
“The test found one.”
I stopped breathing.
“What connection?”
“Not to Anna.”
“Then who?”
Margaret looked sick.
“To Rebecca.”
I stared at her.
“That makes no sense.”
“It didn’t to Daniel either.”
“Rebecca died eight years before Michael was born.”
“Yes.”
“So how could my son be related to her?”
“Because he wasn’t related to Rebecca herself through birth.”
My patience snapped.
“Margaret.”
She looked up.
“The person whose genetic material was used at the clinic was apparently a close male relative of Rebecca.”
I stared.
Rebecca’s father?
Too old, perhaps.
A cousin?
A brother?
“You had a brother?”
Margaret’s silence answered.
“What was his name?”
“Thomas.”
“Where is he?”
“He died in 2004.”
“What did he do?”
Her face went pale.
“He was a doctor.”
I already knew what she would say before she did.
“At St. Matthew’s fertility clinic.”
The room turned hollow.
My son had been conceived at a clinic where Daniel’s dead former lover’s brother worked.
I stood absolutely still.
“Was it an accident?”
Margaret’s eyes filled.
“I don’t know.”
“But Daniel thought it might not have been.”
“No.”
“What did he think?”
She looked toward the locked desk upstairs, as though the dead man might still stop her.
“He thought Thomas did it deliberately.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: Daniel’s Hidden File Suggested Michael’s Conception Was No Clinic Accident, and the One Witness Still Alive Had Been Waiting for Me
The Last Thing Daniel Said Made No Sense Until a Stranger Knocked Before I Had Put Away His Funeral Dress
Part 3 of 20
