I stared at the photograph until the letters blurred.
Three days after Michael was born.
I had still been in the hospital.
I remembered that week with painful clarity.
Michael had arrived after fourteen hours of labor, red-faced and furious, with one fist pressed beside his cheek.
Daniel cried when the nurse placed him in my arms.
Not quietly.
He had turned toward the window and covered his face.
I thought he was overwhelmed with happiness.
Perhaps he had been.
Three days later, Thomas wrote to him.
Now you understand what Rebecca tried to warn you about.
I called Klein.
He answered immediately.
“Where did you find this?”
“Among material Samuel’s daughter sent tonight.”
“Samuel had it?”
“A copy.”
“How?”
“Thomas sent him one.”
Of course.
Thomas wanted witnesses to his cruelty.
“Read me the whole letter.”
Klein hesitated.
“Please.”
Paper moved near the receiver.
Then he read.
Daniel,
Now you understand what Rebecca tried to warn you about. Blood has a way of surviving whatever people do to erase it.
You wanted to take my sister away from us. Father wanted you to learn that families cannot simply be replaced.
The boy is innocent. Remember that.
Raise him well.
T.
I felt physically ill.
“The boy.”
“Yes.”
“He knew Michael was a boy.”
“Yes.”
“He knew he had been born.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We don’t know.”
“Someone at the hospital?”
“Possibly.”
I lowered my voice.
“Does this prove Daniel knew Michael wasn’t his?”
“It proves Thomas wanted him to believe something had been done.”
“And Daniel never told me.”
“No.”
“Did Daniel answer?”
“There is a second letter.”
My stomach tightened.
“From Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Read it.”
This time Klein did not hesitate.
Thomas,
If you come near my wife or children, I will go to the police with everything Rebecca told me.
I don’t know what game you are playing, and I don’t care.
Michael is my son.
Stay away from us.
Daniel
I sat down in the hospital hallway.
The anger I had carried toward Daniel shifted.
Not vanished.
Shifted.
“He didn’t believe Thomas.”
“Apparently not.”
“At first.”
“No.”
“He thought it was psychological revenge.”
“That is my reading.”
“And when Samuel came the next year?”
“He began to suspect there might be more.”
I remembered Samuel’s statement.
He asked whether we had used fertility treatment.
Asked whether Thomas had been involved.
Daniel hit him.
Perhaps Daniel had not struck Samuel because he thought Samuel was threatening us.
Perhaps he struck him because the possibility he had refused to believe suddenly stood in his backyard.
“When did Daniel know for certain?”
“Twelve years ago, after the DNA test.”
“So he suspected from 1991 until then.”
“Yes.”
Twenty-three years.
A suspicion buried so deeply that I never saw it.
“What else did you find?”
“Nothing I want to interpret before I verify it.”
“Klein.”
“I’m serious, Mrs. Hale. We have spent twelve years untangling altered records and statements from frightened people. Guessing is what created half this damage.”
That stopped me.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said.
“I’ll be there.”
I ended the call.
Michael emerged from Emma’s room.
“She’s asleep.”
I looked at him.
My son.
Samuel’s biological child.
Daniel’s son in every way that had shaped the man standing before me.
“Did your father ever show you Thomas’s letter?”
“No.”
“He received it three days after you were born.”
Michael sat beside me.
I showed him the photograph.
He read slowly.
His jaw tightened.
“Dad knew.”
“He knew Thomas claimed something had happened.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
We sat together.
After a while Michael said, “I used to think Dad wasn’t afraid of anything.”
“So did I.”
“He was terrified all the time, wasn’t he?”
The question hurt.
“I think he was terrified of losing people.”
Michael nodded.
“And kept losing pieces of them by hiding things.”
That sounded painfully accurate.
“Your father loved you.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to defend him to prove that.”
“I’m not.”
He looked at me.
“I’m defending myself.”
I understood.
If Daniel’s love became false because of biology, then Michael’s entire childhood changed.
I touched his hand.
“He chose you every day.”
Michael’s eyes filled.
“So why couldn’t he trust us?”
“I don’t know.”
The following morning Emma underwent the bone marrow biopsy.
Rachel stayed with her until the nurses asked us to wait outside.
Michael paced.
Anna sat quietly at the far end of the waiting room.
I drank terrible coffee.
At 9:40, David Klein arrived.
He was not what I expected.
I had imagined someone severe.
Instead he was a compact man in his early sixties with thinning gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a canvas messenger bag that looked older than some of the nurses.
He recognized me immediately.
“Mrs. Hale.”
“Ellen.”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry about Daniel.”
“I’m not ready to discuss him in the past tense with strangers.”
Klein accepted that.
“Fair enough.”
We found an empty consultation room.
Michael joined us.
Rachel stayed with Emma.
Anna came after I asked her.
Klein placed three folders on the table.
“One is everything Daniel had.”
He touched the second.
“One is material obtained from Samuel.”
Then the third.
“And this contains records Daniel never saw.”
“Start there.”
He opened it.
Inside was an old hospital memorandum.
St. Matthew’s Medical Center.
Reproductive Research Program.
A list of specimen transfers.
Klein pointed to an entry dated November 1981.
S. MORGAN — MATERIAL TRANSFERRED TO AUXILIARY STORAGE.
Authorized by T. Morgan, M.D.
Witnessed by R. Ames.
“Rebecca asked Ames to protect Samuel’s material,” Klein said. “Thomas apparently discovered the transfer.”
“How?”
“We found a handwritten note from Rebecca.”
He slid a photocopy toward Anna.
Her mother’s handwriting was uneven.
Tom knows about the second room. Robert says he saw the ledger. If anything happens to me, tell Daniel I was right.
Anna pressed her fingertips to the page.
“This was written before she died?”
“About six weeks.”
“Who had it?”
“Samuel.”
She looked up sharply.
“How?”
“Rebecca mailed it to him.”
“Did he tell Daniel?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“He never received it in 1981.”
I frowned.
“Then how did he get it?”
“After your grandfather died, Margaret’s mother sent Samuel a box of belongings.”
Anna closed her eyes.
“He found it years later.”
“2007.”
“And still didn’t contact Daniel.”
“No.”
I looked at Klein.
“Why?”
“Samuel had spent decades believing Daniel wanted nothing to do with the Morgans. By then he wanted nothing to do with them either.”
Another silence doing damage long after the people who created it were gone.
Klein removed another document.
“This is more important.”
It was a laboratory requisition dated August 1990.
My name appeared under PATIENT.
Daniel’s under PARTNER.
The specimen identification line had been altered.
Under ultraviolet analysis, Klein explained, investigators had recovered part of the original writing.
S. MORGAN.
Michael leaned closer.
“So Thomas wrote Samuel’s name.”
“Yes.”
“Then changed it to Dad’s patient number.”
“Yes.”
“Direct proof.”
“Very close to it.”
I looked at the signature.
“Who authorized the procedure?”
The line contained initials.
T.M.
Thomas Morgan.
My stomach turned.
“But Thomas wasn’t our physician.”
“No.”
“Could he authorize anything?”
“Not legitimately.”
“Then someone else had to ignore it.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Klein opened another folder.
“Dr. Leonard Pierce.”
The name stirred a memory.
“Our fertility specialist.”
“Yes.”
I saw his face.
White coat.
Silver glasses.
A soft voice telling us not to lose hope.
“He knew?”
“We believe he knew records were being altered.”
“Did he know why?”
“That is less clear.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Charlottesville.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“He has refused me for twelve years.”
“Then he can refuse me.”
Klein almost smiled.
“Daniel said you would say that.”
The mention irritated me.
“What else?”
Klein handed me a typed transcript.
“Pierce spoke once.”
“To whom?”
“Daniel.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
I looked up.
“You said he refused.”
“He refused me. Daniel approached him at a medical conference.”
“Daniel attended a medical conference?”
“He bought a ticket.”
That was such a Daniel solution that despite myself I almost smiled.
“What did Pierce say?”
“Very little.”
I read.
DANIEL: Did Thomas Morgan substitute reproductive material during my wife’s procedure?
PIERCE: I cannot discuss patient records.
DANIEL: I am the patient.
PIERCE: You are one of them.
I stopped.
“One of them?”
Klein nodded.
“That phrase bothered Daniel for years.”
Michael leaned forward.
“What did Pierce mean?”
“We don’t know.”
The transcript continued.
DANIEL: Was my wife harmed?
PIERCE: Not physically.
DANIEL: Was my son conceived with Samuel Morgan’s specimen?
Long pause.
PIERCE: Ask Thomas’s father why he paid the clinic.
Then Pierce ended the conversation.
I looked at Klein.
“Paid the clinic?”
“We found a donation.”
“How much?”
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
In 1990.
A fortune.
“To St. Matthew’s?”
“To the reproductive medicine program.”
“When?”
“Two weeks before my procedure?”
“Eleven days.”
Michael cursed under his breath.
Anna stared at the table.
“So my grandfather bought access.”
“That is one possibility.”
“One?”
Klein’s caution frustrated me.
“What other possibility is there?”
“The donation was documented as funding for laboratory expansion.”
“And eleven days later Thomas secretly substitutes his brother’s sperm into my procedure.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t subtle.”
“No.”
“Why wasn’t this investigated?”
“Because no one connected the donation to your procedure.”
“Until Daniel.”
“Until Daniel.”
I thought of my husband sitting at his desk night after night.
Not paying bills.
Not organizing receipts.
Investigating the circumstances of our son’s conception while I watched television downstairs.
“What did Daniel intend to do with this?”
“Expose St. Matthew’s.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“He wanted one thing first.”
“What?”
“Pierce’s testimony.”
“And he never got it.”
“No.”
Klein reached into his bag.
“But I might have.”
He placed his phone on the table.
“This came last night after I contacted him about Daniel’s death.”
An audio message.
Klein pressed play.
An elderly man spoke.
“I heard Daniel Hale died. I suppose that makes me the last coward still breathing.”
No one moved.
“I knew Thomas altered the Hale procedure. I did not know whose specimen he used until afterward.”
My heart pounded.
“His father threatened the program. He said the Morgan family would destroy the hospital financially if we reported Thomas.”
Pierce coughed.
“I signed the false report.”
Michael whispered, “Jesus.”
The recording continued.
“But Thomas did something his father did not know.”
Klein looked at me.
Pierce’s voice weakened.
“He kept a second sample from Ellen Hale’s procedure.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
The recording answered.
“He intended to use it again.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Dr. Pierce Revealed Thomas Planned a Second Conception Without My Knowledge, and Daniel’s Private Trust Finally Showed Who Stopped Him
The Last Thing Daniel Said Made No Sense Until a Stranger Knocked Before I Had Put Away His Funeral Dress
Part 10 of 20
