Chapter 3
Three days later, I brought Liam home.
The house was too quiet, too empty, without Mark’s shoes by the door, without his music playing in the kitchen.
I’d had the DNA test kit sent to the house the day after Mark left.
I swabbed Liam’s cheek that first night, my hands shaking, and dropped the sample in the mail.
Mark had already sent his in from the hotel.
Eleanor showed up every single day.
She brought groceries, she folded laundry, she held Liam while I napped, but she never stayed more than an hour.
She never talked about what happened in the hospital.
Every time I tried to ask her about Jake, she’d make an excuse and leave.
On the third night, she showed up drunk.
It was 10 p.m.
I was up feeding Liam when she banged on the front door, her eyes red, her hair a mess, a half-empty wine bottle in her hand.
She stumbled into the living room and slid down the wall, crying so hard her shoulders shook.
“I did a terrible thing,” she sobbed, not looking at me. “I was so young, so scared. I thought if I buried it deep enough, it would never come back. But it did. It’s all my fault. All of it.”
I sat down on the couch across from her, Liam warm in my arms.
“What did you do, Eleanor?” I said, soft but firm. “Is this about Jake?”
Her head snapped up, her eyes wide with terror.
She scrambled to her feet, the wine bottle clattering to the floor, red wine soaking into the carpet.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “If I tell you, I lose everything. I’m sorry, Lila. I’m so sorry.”
She ran out the door before I could stop her.
The next morning, I called a private investigator.
I told him everything: Mark’s demand, Eleanor’s terror, Jake’s weird behavior, the matching scars.
“Find out everything you can about Jake,” I said. “Where he came from, who his birth parents are. Everything.”
Two days later, his report hit my email at 2 a.m.
I was up feeding Liam, the house dark and quiet, when I opened it.
My blood turned to ice.
Jake was adopted at birth, 32 years ago.
The adoption papers had his birth mother’s name redacted, but the date of birth matched exactly the three months Eleanor had once told me she’d “stayed with an aunt” when she was 17.
The birth hospital was the same small town hospital Eleanor had grown up near.
And there was a note attached, from the PI:
Cross-referenced old hospital records. Birth mother’s first name was Eleanor.
I stared at the screen, Liam’s soft breathing against my chest.
It all clicked.
Jake was Eleanor’s son.
Mark’s older brother.
She’d given him up for adoption when she was a kid, and now he was back.
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He’d wormed his way into Mark’s life, into our family, for one reason only.
Revenge.
