CHAPTER 30 FOUNDATION HOUSE
The service boat crossed the dark water without lights.
Nathan steered while Claire sat beside him.
Vanessa and Evelyn remained behind with Margaret and the police.
Claire had refused to bring anyone Cole could use against them.
The island appeared through the fog.
Foundation House stood above the rocks.
Unlike St. Orla, it had been maintained.
Every window was intact.
The front door opened before they reached it.
Inside, the entrance hall resembled a family home.
Photographs covered the walls.
Claire appeared in many of them.
At five years old.
At nine.
At sixteen.
Some had been taken through windows.
Others had been taken inside her adoptive parents’ home.
Nathan found photographs of himself too.
His first day at school.
His graduation.
The night he met Claire.
A note beneath the final image read:
CONTACT SUCCESSFUL.
Claire tore it from the wall.
“He watched everything.”
“He designed everything,” Nathan said.
A child cried somewhere below them.
They followed the sound through a hidden door.
The lower level had been constructed like a medical facility.
One room had been made to resemble Claire’s childhood bedroom.
The same wallpaper.
The same wooden horse beside the bed.
Claire touched it.
“I had this toy.”
Nathan examined the underside.
A camera had been hidden inside.
Another room contained a replica of Nathan’s nursery at Blackwood.
A third held metal restraints and recordings labeled with Gabriel’s name.
Claire heard her daughter again.
She ran toward the final corridor.
Five bassinets stood inside a circular nursery.
Four were empty.
The fifth contained a white blanket.
Claire pulled it aside.
The bassinet was empty.
Her daughter’s hospital bracelet lay inside.
A television switched on.
Cole appeared.
Not a recording.
A live feed.
“You are close,” he said.
Nathan looked toward the ceiling cameras.
“Come out.”
“You spent your entire life demanding the truth without understanding what it costs.”
“You took our child.”
“I saved her from Margaret.”
“You created Margaret.”
Cole smiled.
“No. Margaret created herself.”
Claire held the bracelet toward the camera.
“Where is my daughter?”
A door opened on the opposite side of the nursery.
Cole Whitmore entered.
Older.
Thinner.
But alive.
He carried a newborn beneath a white blanket.
Claire stopped breathing.
The baby opened her eyes.
Nathan moved forward.
Cole raised one hand.
“Do not come closer.”
“Give her to Claire.”
“You still believe this is about possession.”
“It is about our child.”
Cole looked down at the newborn.
“This child is the only person alive who can prove what happened at St. Orla.”
“She was born tonight.”
“Her blood was born thirty-eight years ago.”
Claire’s hands shook.
“Give her to me.”
Another door opened behind Cole.
A woman stepped into the room carrying a second newborn.
Her face remained hidden beneath a dark hood.
Nathan stared at the two babies.
Both had dark hair.
Both wore identical hospital bracelets.
Claire moved toward the first.
The hooded woman pulled back the blanket around the second child.
Behind the baby’s left ear was a crescent-shaped birthmark.
Claire turned toward the child in Cole’s arms.
The same mark appeared behind her ear.
“That’s impossible,” Claire whispered.
Cole looked at Nathan.
“One child was born in the Whitmore delivery room.”
The hooded woman moved into the light.
“The other was born beneath this house.”
Claire stared at her face.
The woman looked almost exactly like Claire’s adoptive mother, who had died eleven years earlier.
The woman smiled.
“You still don’t remember me.”
Claire stepped back.
Nathan positioned himself between Claire and Cole.
“Which baby is ours?”
Cole looked at the two newborns.
Then he looked directly at Claire.
“That depends on which mother you believe.”
Somewhere inside Foundation House, a third baby began to cry.
Every door in the nursery locked at once.
Cole’s smile disappeared.
He turned toward the sound.
May you like
“That child should not be alive.”
The lights went out.
