Chapter 5 - The Shadow of St. Mary's-5
The rain returned before sunrise, washing against the windowpanes in heavy, gray sheets. I didn't sleep a single minute. I spent the remainder of the night sitting in the armchair beside Lily’s bed, watching the soft, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest as she slept, holding her small hand in mine.
Looked at closely, the physical resemblance that I had missed for two years was suddenly glaringly obvious.
Lily had Julianna’s delicate, narrow nose, the soft arc of her eyebrows, and the distinctive tiny brown mole just below her left collarbone. I had spent two years believing I had simply gotten lucky—that the adoption agency had matched us with a sweet, quiet little girl who happened to fit into our lives seamlessly. But it hadn't been luck.
It had been an engineered placement. Or a terrifying coincidence that my parents had desperately tried to undo.
At 7:30 AM, Sarah arrived to take care of Lily for the day. Daniel and I stood in the kitchen, drinking black coffee, review the action plan Marcus had laid out during a 6:00 AM briefing.
"The federal petition for an emergency audit of the Sterling Family Trust has been filed with the District Court in Portland," Daniel said, showing me the confirmation seal on his tablet. "Because the trust involves interstate wire transfers and potential medical fraud across state lines, the FBI’s Financial Crimes Unit has been notified."
"Good," I said, putting on my coat. "I'm going to St. Mary's."
Daniel stepped in front of me, his brow furrowed with deep concern. "Emily, you had major abdominal surgery forty-eight hours ago. You shouldn't even be driving, let alone confronting your uncle at his hospital."
"Harrison is the key to this, Daniel," I said, my voice steady and unyielding. "He signed the fake death certificate in 2016. He’s the chief of surgery at St. Mary’s. And he was the one who personally oversaw my emergency appendectomy three days ago."
A sudden, cold shiver ran down my spine as that realization settled into my brain.
Three days ago, I had been rushed to St. Mary’s with a ruptured appendix. Harrison had been the attending surgeon who performed the operation. He was the one who had told Daniel that I needed to stay in the ICU for forty-eight hours, isolated from visitors, while my parents took Lily to their house.
My appendicitis hadn't been faked—the pain had been real, the infection dangerous. But the timing... the sudden, overwhelming insistence by my parents that they take Lily while I was incapacitated...
Had my hospital stay been used as a manufactured window of opportunity to isolate Lily and permanently remove her from my home?
"I'm coming with you," Daniel declared, grabbing his car keys from the counter. "You're not stepping foot into that hospital without me."
Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the parking structure of St. Mary’s Hospital. The massive concrete building loomed over the city streets, its sterile glass facade reflecting the dark storm clouds above.
We took the executive elevator directly to the administrative floor on the sixth level. The floor was quiet, lined with carpeted corridors, plush leather chairs, and framed portraits of the hospital’s major donors—including a prominent oil painting of my grandfather, Marcus Sterling Sr.
Dr. Harrison Vance’s office sat at the end of the hall behind a set of frosted glass double doors.
His administrative assistant, a sharp-featured woman in her fifties, looked up in surprise as Daniel and I pushed through the doors.
"Mrs. Vance—I mean, Mrs. Sterling," she stammered, standing up from her desk. "Dr. Vance is in a high-level board conference right now. He isn't taking appointments—"
I didn't answer her. I walked straight past her desk, grabbed the heavy brass handle of Harrison’s private office door, and pushed it open.
The office was sprawling, furnished with mahogany bookshelves, leather sofas, and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the Portland skyline. Sitting behind his massive glass desk was Dr. Harrison Vance, dressed in his immaculate white lab coat, a silver pen poised over a stack of medical charts.
Sitting across from him in two plush leather armchairs were my father, Arthur, and my mother, Eleanor.
All three of them froze, their heads snapping toward the door as Daniel and I stepped inside.
"Emily?" my mother gasped, her hand flying to her pearl necklace. "What on earth are you doing out of bed?! You should be resting!"
My father stood up slowly, his face hardening into an expression of thunderous rage. "Have you come here to execute more of your petty legal threats, Emily? Because I have spent the last three hours on the phone with our corporate litigation team—"
"Shut up, Arthur," I said softly, stepping into the center of the room.
My father blinked, stunned into silence by the absolute venom in my voice.
I turned my eyes toward my uncle Harrison. He hadn't stood up. He sat calmly behind his glass desk, his hands folded neatly over his charts, his sharp gray eyes evaluating me with cold, clinical detachment.
"Uncle Harrison," I said, walking right up to the edge of his desk, leaning down until I was level with his eyes. "Tell me about Aspen, Colorado. Tell me about November 2016."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
My mother let out a faint, terrified whimper. My father took an involuntary step backward, his face turning an ash-gray color.
Harrison didn't flinch. He didn't blink. But the silver pen in his right hand tightened ever so slightly between his fingers.
"I don't know what you're referring to, Emily," Harrison said smoothly, his voice dropping into a deep, hypnotic baritone. "Aspen was where we suffered the tragic loss of your sister Julianna. It is a painful memory for this family, and I strongly suggest you do not drag it into your current emotional breakdown."
I pulled a folded piece of paper from my coat pocket and slammed it flat against the glass top of his desk.
May you like
It was the high-resolution copy of Lily’s unredacted birth certificate from Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, dated October 14, 2018.
"Then explain this," I whispered, my voice echoing through the silent office. "Explain why my dead sister gave birth to my daughter two years after you signed her death certificate."
