CHAPTER 5 — THE DAUGHTER IN THE FAMILY PORTRAIT
Beatrice asked the staff to leave us alone.
Charles watched her with open hostility.
“You promised,” he said.
Beatrice rested both hands on her cane.
“I promised to protect the family. You confused that with protecting you.”
I remained standing.
“Who is the other child?”
Beatrice looked at the fertility documents in my hand.
“Eleanor.”
I stared at her.
“Sarah and Eleanor shared a father.”
“That was the story Sarah was told.”
“It wasn’t true?”
“No.”
Beatrice’s voice remained steady.
“Sarah’s father raised Eleanor, but he was not her biological father.”
Charles closed his eyes.
Beatrice continued.
“Eleanor is Charles’s daughter.”
The room became silent.
My father had fathered Eleanor during an affair.
Sarah’s father had agreed to raise her to avoid scandal.
That meant Eleanor was not Sarah’s biological half sister.
She was mine.
My knees nearly gave out.
Maya’s biological mother was my half sister.
“No,” I said.
Charles finally spoke.
“It was never supposed to become personal.”
I turned on him.
“You used your own daughter’s egg?”
“I did not know Eleanor was the donor until after the procedure.”
Beatrice laughed bitterly.
“That is another lie.”
She opened her handbag and removed a small ledger.
Every payment Charles had made to Eleanor was listed by date.
The first payment occurred three months before the embryo transfer.
“Eleanor knew too?” I asked.
“Yes,” Beatrice said. “She knew Charles was her father. She also knew you were her brother.”
Nausea rose in my throat.
The fertility clinic had used Eleanor’s egg and my sperm.
Maya had been conceived through a relationship neither of us knowingly chose.
It was medically possible.
Legally monstrous.
Morally unforgivable.
“Why would Eleanor agree?”
“Charles promised her legitimacy,” Beatrice said. “A place in the family. Shares. Recognition.”
Charles looked toward the garden.
“She wanted money.”
“She wanted a father,” Beatrice replied.
For one brief second, I saw the shape of Eleanor’s tragedy.
Then I remembered Maya crouched beside the table.
Pain did not excuse cruelty.
“Did Sarah discover this?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“During her final year.”
“That’s why she was afraid.”
Beatrice nodded.
“Sarah understood that if the truth became public, Maya would be treated as a scandal instead of a child.”
I thought of every headline that could be written.
Every cruel word Maya might one day read.
“Who else knows?”
“David. Charles. Eleanor. Gavin. Sarah’s nurse.”
“And you.”
Beatrice met my eyes.
“And me.”
I looked at my father.
“What did you do when Sarah threatened to expose it?”
Charles said nothing.
Beatrice answered for him.
“He had her removed from an experimental cancer program.”
My body went cold.
“She was responding to that treatment.”
“Yes.”
The program had given Sarah six good months. Then the hospital suddenly informed us she no longer qualified.
I had accepted the explanation.
Her disease had progressed rapidly afterward.
“Did removing her cause her death?”
Beatrice’s face softened.
“Cancer killed Sarah. But Charles may have taken away time she could have had.”
I grabbed the back of a chair.
“You knew and did nothing.”
“I confronted him.”
“That is not the same as stopping him.”
“No,” she said quietly. “It isn’t.”
Charles shifted in his seat.
“This family employs forty thousand people. Sarah was prepared to burn everything down.”
“She was trying to protect her daughter.”
“She was trying to satisfy her conscience.”
The door opened again.
A nurse stood there, pale and uncertain.
“Mr. Sterling, there are police officers downstairs.”
Charles looked at me.
“You called them?”
“I didn’t.”
Beatrice glanced at the window.
Two black SUVs had entered the courtyard.
Not police vehicles.
Charles’s expression changed.
He reached beneath his blanket and removed a phone.
Before I could take it, he pressed one button.
The doors to the room locked.
Metal shutters began descending over the windows.
Then the facility’s alarm sounded.
May you like
Charles looked directly at me.
“Gavin is out of custody.”
