No one spoke after the recording ended.
Michael was the first to move.
He reached across the table and pressed replay.
Pierce’s voice filled the consultation room again.
“He kept a second sample from Ellen Hale’s procedure.”
Then:
“He intended to use it again.”
Michael stopped the recording.
“What does that mean?”
Klein shook his head.
“I called Pierce after receiving this. He wouldn’t answer.”
“Use it again on whom?”
“That is what I was hoping Daniel’s papers might clarify.”
I felt cold.
“You’re telling me Thomas preserved Samuel’s specimen after using it to conceive Michael.”
“Apparently.”
“For another patient?”
“Possibly.”
“Or me?”
Klein’s expression answered before he spoke.
“That possibility cannot be excluded.”
I stood.
I suddenly could not tolerate the small room.
The hospital walls.
The fluorescent light.
The careful voices.
“I need air.”
Michael rose.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“I need five minutes where nobody in this family tells me something.”
He sat.
Outside, the September morning was cool and bright.
The rain had finally stopped.
I stood near the hospital entrance watching strangers arrive carrying coffee, balloons, flowers.
I thought about pregnancy.
About how intimate it had been.
How exposed.
How completely I had trusted people whose names I barely remembered.
I had believed science was helping Daniel and me have a child.
Thomas had turned my body into a message to another man.
And apparently once had not been enough.
When I returned, Klein had spread Daniel’s private trust documents across the table.
“What does the trust have to do with Thomas?”
“Everything.”
The trust had been established twelve years earlier.
Its original purpose was not inheritance.
It funded investigation.
Private laboratory testing.
Legal research.
Searches for Anna.
Searches for Samuel.
And payments to people who had retained records from St. Matthew’s.
“How much did Daniel spend?”
“Over a hundred thousand dollars.”
My stomach tightened.
“From where?”
“Money inherited from his mother.”
I remembered the inheritance.
Daniel told me most had gone into retirement investments.
Another lie.
Klein showed me the accounting.
Daniel had also set aside funds for potential medical expenses for descendants affected by the clinic manipulation.
That included Michael.
Rachel.
Emma.
Noah.
And Anna.
“He knew there could be consequences,” I said.
“He feared there could.”
“Yet didn’t tell us.”
“No.”
The contradiction was almost unbearable.
Daniel had prepared financially for damage while withholding the knowledge needed to confront it.
“He wanted to fix everything without anyone knowing it was broken.”
Klein looked at me.
“That is probably the most accurate description I’ve heard of him.”
I turned the pages.
One payment caught my attention.
$18,000.
Recipient: R.A. Estate.
“What is this?”
“Robert Ames’s widow.”
“The technician?”
“Yes.”
“For records?”
“For a storage key.”
I looked up.
“What storage?”
Klein removed a photograph.
A small commercial storage facility.
“After Ames died, his widow found a key and a note telling her to contact Daniel Hale if he ever came asking about St. Matthew’s.”
“Why Daniel?”
“Because Rebecca had given Ames Daniel’s name.”
My heart stopped.
Rebecca.
Before she died.
Before I met Daniel.
She had planted a trail leading back to him.
“What was in the unit?”
“Mostly old laboratory equipment and records.”
“Mostly?”
“One cryogenic transport container.”
I stared.
“Still containing samples?”
“No viable material. It had been without proper storage for decades.”
“But labels?”
“Yes.”
Klein slid over photographs.
Several vials.
Handwritten codes.
One label read S.M.
Another read D.H.
Daniel Hale.
I stared.
“Why was Daniel’s sample there?”
“Because Thomas didn’t discard it.”
The clinic log had said inadequate sample — discard.
Instead Thomas had stored Daniel’s original specimen.
“Why?”
“We think that is what Pierce meant.”
I felt the answer approaching.
“He planned to use Daniel’s sample on someone else.”
Klein nodded.
Michael leaned forward.
“Who?”
Klein opened a final folder.
“Anna.”
Anna went completely still.
“What?”
My stomach turned.
“You were twelve in 1990.”
“Yes.”
“Then that makes no sense.”
“It wasn’t intended for 1990.”
Klein explained.
Thomas had apparently maintained reproductive material for years.
Among the papers in Ames’s storage unit was a handwritten planning sheet dated 1994.
Anna would have been sixteen.
On it were initials.
A.R.H.
Beside them:
D.H. specimen reserved.
Anna stood so quickly her chair struck the wall.
“No.”
Klein immediately said, “There is no evidence any procedure occurred.”
“What was he planning?”
“We don’t know.”
“That’s my father’s sample.”
“Yes.”
“My biological father.”
“Yes.”
Her face drained.
“He was going to use my father’s sperm on me?”
“There is no evidence he succeeded or even attempted it.”
Anna covered her mouth.
Michael turned away.
I understood then why Klein had been so careful.
Thomas had not simply wanted revenge.
Whatever obsession drove him had moved beyond anything rational.
“Why?” Anna whispered.
Klein answered softly.
“We may never know.”
But Margaret had told me something.
Thomas believed Daniel had taken Rebecca from the family.
His father believed blood could not be replaced.
Thomas preserved samples.
Manipulated conception.
Moved people around like pieces in a family experiment.
“He wanted control over bloodlines,” I said.
Klein nodded slowly.
“That is one interpretation Daniel reached.”
Anna sat again.
“I had Rachel in 1997.”
“Yes.”
“Could Thomas have been involved?”
“We investigated.”
Her face tightened.
“And?”
“Rachel’s biological father was the young man you identified.”
Relief collapsed through her.
“He wasn’t Daniel.”
“No.”
“Or anyone else in the Morgan family.”
“No.”
She began crying.
Quietly.
I moved beside her.
I did not know whether I had the right to touch her.
Then she reached for my hand.
So I let her hold it.
Michael looked toward the door.
“Dad found this?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“Did he tell Anna?”
“No.”
Anna laughed through tears.
“Of course not.”
I squeezed her hand.
This time I understood Daniel’s fear more than I wanted to.
How do you tell a daughter you abandoned that her uncle once planned something monstrous involving your genetic material?
But understanding was not absolution.
“What happened to Thomas’s private archive?” I asked.
Klein looked at me.
“That is the problem.”
“What problem?”
“We never found all of it.”
The room chilled.
“How much is missing?”
“We don’t know.”
“Could there be other children?”
“Yes.”
“Conceived through manipulated procedures?”
“Possibly.”
Michael rubbed his forehead.
“This is bigger than our family.”
“Yes.”
“Then why hasn’t anyone gone to authorities?”
“Daniel was building a case.”
“For twelve years?”
“He was afraid incomplete evidence would disappear once the hospital learned he had it.”
I thought of the note.
Do not let St. Matthew’s know what he found until you have copies.
“He didn’t trust them.”
“No.”
“Do you?”
Klein considered.
“I trust documents more than institutions.”
That answer sounded like something Daniel would appreciate.
A knock came at the door.
Dr. Patel entered.
Every other concern vanished from the room.
Rachel stood behind her.
I searched her face.
“Emma?”
Dr. Patel sat.
“The preliminary marrow examination does not show leukemia.”
Rachel began crying before the doctor finished.
Michael crossed the room and held her.
I closed my eyes.
For one moment, relief was so powerful that nothing else existed.
Dr. Patel continued.
“There are abnormalities we need to understand, but the immediate result is reassuring.”
“What kind of abnormalities?” Michael asked.
“We are seeing reduced production in certain cell lines. Genetics is reviewing the family information you provided.”
“Could the variant explain it?”
“Possibly. We need confirmatory testing.”
Rachel wiped her face.
“Is she in danger?”
“Her platelet count is low enough that we need precautions and monitoring, but she is stable.”
Stable.
The word felt beautiful.
“When will we know more?”
“Several days for some tests. Longer for others.”
Rachel nodded.
“Thank you.”
After the doctor left, Michael held Rachel again.
This time she allowed it.
Not forgiveness.
Fear temporarily outranking anger.
Klein quietly gathered his papers.
Before leaving, he handed me a key.
“What is this?”
“Daniel’s safe-deposit box.”
“Another one?”
“Not at your bank.”
“Where?”
“First Commonwealth downtown.”
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“Daniel opened it without me.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
My pulse quickened.
“What did he put there?”
“He said the one thing he had no right to keep anymore.”
I looked at the small brass key.
“Did he say what that meant?”
“Yes.”
Klein put on his coat.
“He said, ‘Ellen’s choice.’”
Click here to continue reading: PART 12: Daniel’s Safe-Deposit Box Contained No Money, Only the Decision He Had Stolen From Me and the Address of the Man Still Alive
The Last Thing Daniel Said Made No Sense Until a Stranger Knocked Before I Had Put Away His Funeral Dress
Part 11 of 20
