Chapter 3 - THE SECRET IN MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE
I didn't sleep that night.
Neither did Michael.
The police took him away shortly after midnight.
Ashley was arrested for evidence tampering after officers discovered she had deleted several videos from her phone.
Chris cooperated.
The others disappeared into the rain.
But Michael's last sentence stayed inside my head.
You've been one of them from the beginning.
At six in the morning, Detective Brooks returned.
She brought coffee.
I didn't touch it.
"What did he mean?"
She sat down.
"Before I answer, I need you to understand something."
"That sounds like another warning."
"It is."
She opened a folder.
"Your birth records were altered."
I stared at her.
"What?"
"There are discrepancies."
"What kind?"
"Your original hospital record lists a different mother."
My body went cold.
"No."
"We're verifying it."
"My mother is Margaret."
"I know."
"You don't get to tell me who my mother is."
"I'm not."
She pushed a photocopy toward me.
A hospital form.
My name.
My birth date.
But under mother's name was someone else.
I stared at the unfamiliar name.
"Who is she?"
"We don't know yet."
"Then how does Michael know?"
Detective Brooks hesitated.
"Because his father worked at the hospital."
That stopped me.
"What?"
"Daniel Carter was a hospital administrator."
Michael's father.
A man who had died when Michael was twenty-two.
A man Michael had always described as strict, distant and obsessed with privacy.
I suddenly remembered something.
Michael once told me that his father had kept "old patient records" in a private archive.
I had thought he was joking.
Detective Brooks watched my face.
"You remembered something."
"My husband had an office."
"Where?"
"Basement."
She stood.
"We need to go there."
The basement door was locked.
An officer forced it open.
The room smelled like dust and chemicals.
There were shelves everywhere.
Boxes.
Hard drives.
Old medical files.
Photographs.
And one metal cabinet.
Michael's father had apparently never thrown anything away.
Inside the cabinet was a single envelope.
My name was written across it.
SARAH MILLER.
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Two women stood outside a hospital.
One was my mother.
The other was the woman from the birth certificate.
On the back was a handwritten sentence.
"She doesn't know."
Below it was a date.
The day I was born.
Detective Brooks took the photograph.
"Sarah."
"What?"
"Look at the woman beside your mother."
I did.
I recognized her.
Not personally.
But from Michael's photographs.
One of the women in his secret collection.
I couldn't breathe.
"No."
Detective Brooks turned the photograph over again.
There was another note.
"Keep the child away from the Carter family."
My knees buckled.
The Carter family.
Michael's family.
The room suddenly felt too small.
I looked at Detective Brooks.
"Why?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Then her phone rang.
She listened.
Her expression changed.
"What?"
A pause.
"You're sure?"
Another pause.
Then she looked at me.
May you like
"Michael escaped custody."
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