CHAPTER 11 — THE MOTHER WHO DIED TWICE
Claire’s birth certificate stated that she had been born thirty years earlier at Bellmont General Hospital.
The photograph suggested something entirely different.
The baby in Helen’s arms appeared less than one year old, yet the image had been taken when Claire was supposedly eight.
Someone had written Claire’s name on the back recently.
Claire began to question every record from her childhood.
Her earliest clear memory was waking in a hospital at age nine after a serious fever. Helen told her the illness had caused memory gaps.
There were almost no family photographs from before that year.
Adrian ordered an emergency comparison between Claire’s childhood medical records and her current DNA.
The result was devastating.
The blood type listed in her early records was incompatible with her current blood type.
“Those records belong to another child,” Dr. Ortiz explained.
“Then who am I?” Claire asked.
No one could answer.
Ethan was released after the independent DNA test proved the remains were unlikely to be Daniel.
He returned home, but the investigation had changed something between him and Claire.
He wanted to trust her.
Yet every new discovery connected her more deeply to his father’s disappearance.
They searched Helen’s former house and found a false wall behind Claire’s childhood bedroom.
Inside were videotapes, photographs and identity documents belonging to several different children.
One videotape was labeled:
CLAIRE—AGE EIGHT—TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Ethan inserted it into an old player.
The footage showed a hospital room.
A frightened little girl sat on the bed while Helen and Evelyn argued nearby.
“We cannot keep calling her Claire,” Helen said.
“It is the only name she remembers,” Evelyn replied.
“What happens when the real Claire comes back?”
“She isn’t coming back.”
The girl on the bed turned toward the camera.
She was not Ethan’s wife.
She had blond hair and blue eyes.
Claire stopped the video.
“There was another child.”
Ethan continued watching.
Daniel entered the hospital room.
He knelt beside the blond girl and promised she would be safe.
Then the camera shifted toward the doorway.
A second child stood in the hall.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
A small scar beside her left eyebrow.
It was Claire.
The date on the footage was two years after Daniel’s plane crash.
Daniel was alive.
Claire had known him as a child.
But she appeared to have forgotten everything.
The final seconds showed Daniel speaking to Helen.
“Ethan can never learn which girl belongs to David.”
Helen looked directly toward the camera.
“Then we will have to change both of their identities.”
The tape ended.
Claire and Ethan sat in silence.
A knock came from the front door.
Vanessa stood outside, trembling.
She held an old passport bearing her photograph.
May you like
The name printed beneath it was not Vanessa Vale.
It was Claire Carter.
