Chapter 3 - Ink and Blood
The kitchen seemed to contract, the bright morning sunlight suddenly feeling clinical and sterile, like the overhead lamps of an emergency room. Thomas stared at the worn leather journal extended toward him. The cover was scuffed and stained with what looked like decades-old coffee rings, but near the corner, a small smear of darker brown caught his eye. Dried blood. His stomach turned violently, a wave of nausea rolling up his throat. He did not reach out to take the book; instead, he kept his hands firmly planted on the edge of the kitchen counter, his knuckles aching from the pressure.
"I don't want to read your excuses, Elena," Thomas said, his voice hard as iron. "I want the truth. Out of your mouth. Right now. Whose handwriting is that? Who is this nurse?"
Elena let out a hollow, humorless laugh that sounded more like a dry sob. She pulled the journal back slightly, pressing it against her white knit sweater as if it were a fragile infant. "Her name was Clara. Clara Vance. And she wasn't just a nurse, Thomas. She was the only person in that entire county hospital who knew what the chief of obstetrics was doing to the records behind closed doors. You think we just walked into a clinic and picked out a baby like a puppy from a shelter? You think this was some casual, cold-blooded choice?"
"Then tell me!" Thomas roared, finally losing the restraint he had maintained for the past ten minutes. He slammed his palm against the counter, the loud crack echoing off the tiled walls and causing a distant, frightened gasp to filter down the hallway from Sophie's bedroom. Thomas immediately reined in his temper, breathing heavily through his nose, his chest rising and falling beneath his dark blue shirt. He lowered his voice to a dangerous, vibrating hiss. "Tell me what happened in Portland, Elena. Because every second you waste protecting whatever secrets are in that book, the less likely I am to stand between you and a prison cell."
Elena walked slowly toward the table, her boots clicking softly against the floor. She laid the leather journal down precisely between the two plastic hospital ID tags: BABY GIRL MORGAN and BABY BOY MORGAN. The juxtaposition of the innocent childhood mementos and the sinister aura of the notebook sent a cold shiver down Thomas's spine.
"Open to page forty-two," Elena whispered, her eyes fixed on the grain of the wooden table. "Don't take my word for it. Read Clara's handwriting. Read what she wrote about the boy. About why he had to be separated from his sister the moment they took their first breaths."
Thomas hesitated. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to ignore the book, to grab his car keys, take Sophie, and drive straight to the nearest police precinct. But the mention of the boy—his hypothetical son, a child whose existence he had been entirely unaware of until twenty minutes ago—pulled at a dark, morbid curiosity he couldn't suppress. Slowly, reluctantly, he reached out and flipped the cover open. The pages were thick, yellowed with age, and filled with a frantic, looping cursive that grew increasingly erratic as the entries progressed.
He turned the pages one by one, his eyes scanning the clinical notes, the forged signatures, and the bureaucratic nightmares detailed in the margins. But it was halfway through the book, on the specific page Elena had referenced, where the words stopped being administrative and turned deeply, horrifyingly personal. Clara Vance had detailed an operation that had nothing to do with standard medical care, and everything to do with a powerful family covering up a fatal medical error.
Thomas stopped breathing as his eyes locked onto a specific paragraph near the bottom of the page. The ink had smeared slightly, as if a tear had fallen onto the paper while the writer was holding the pen. He read the sentence three times to ensure his sleep-deprived brain wasn't misinterpreting the letters.
"No," Thomas whispered, shaking his head slowly as the room began to spin. He looked up at Elena, his expression a mix of horror and profound betrayal. "This... this has to be a sick joke. You're telling me he didn't die of complications?"
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Elena closed her eyes, a single tear finally slipping down her cheek. "He didn't die, Thomas. But the people who took him didn't want him to live as our son, either. And the man who signed the adoption papers... was your own brother."
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