Chapter 2 - INFANT A
The banquet ended within fifteen minutes.
No speeches.
No explanations.
No dramatic removal.
Stellan’s attorney, Grace Ellison, arrived before Imogen left.
Imogen departed with her own lawyer.
Correctly.
Nobody confiscated her private phone.
Nobody illegally detained her.
The Corsaro-owned event computers, security cameras, and estate records were preserved.
Stellan had learned over the years that anger destroyed evidence faster than fire.
Dulcie slept in his room.
Or tried.
At 1:17 a.m., she whispered:
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the other girl?”
Stellan stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t know.”
“Is she yours?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Imogen know?”
“Maybe.”
Dulcie rolled onto her side.
“Is she going to replace me?”
Stellan turned instantly.
“No.”
“You don’t even know who she is.”
“I don’t have to.”
Dulcie stared.
“No child replaces another child.”
She was quiet.
Then:
“Imogen said new families have to make room.”
Stellan’s face hardened.
“What did she mean?”
“She said Mommy already had her turn.”
He closed his eyes.
That sentence would stay.
Not because it was clever.
Because someone had said it to a child.
He touched Dulcie’s hair.
“Your mother does not get erased because somebody else enters our lives.”
“Even if you marry?”
“I’m not marrying Imogen.”
Dulcie sat up.
“Because of me?”
“No.”
Important.
“Because of her choices.”
Dulcie absorbed that.
Then:
“Good.”
Stellan almost laughed.
By morning Grace had preliminary results.
The phrase “Infant A” existed.
Not on Dulcie’s birth certificate.
On an archived neonatal intake log from Saint Catherine Medical Center.
Eight years earlier.
DULCIE ELENA CORSARO — FEMALE INFANT A.
Stellan stared.
“What does A mean?”
Grace answered:
“Could be routine labeling.”
“For what?”
“Multiple birth.”
Silence.
Stellan looked up.
Grace continued carefully.
“Twins.”
“No.”
“We don’t know.”
“Elena had one baby.”
“That’s what you were told.”
“I was there.”
“For the delivery?”
Stellan stopped.
No.
He had been at the hospital.
But not in the operating room.
Elena had required emergency surgery after complications.
Stellan had been kept outside.
He remembered a physician coming out.
A girl.
Healthy.
Elena stable.
One baby.
He remembered asking:
“Only one?”
Why had he asked that?
Because during pregnancy, an early ultrasound had initially suggested a second sac.
Then doctors said it had not developed.
Vanishing twin.
Common enough.
At twenty weeks, only one fetus remained.
At least that was what they had been told.
Grace watched his face.
“You remembered something.”
Stellan stood.
“Elena was originally pregnant with twins.”
Grace went still.
“What happened?”
“They told us one stopped developing early.”
“Who told you?”
“Doctor.”
“Name?”
“Samuel Price.”
Grace typed.
Dr. Samuel Price.
Retired.
Living in Massachusetts.
Then Noah entered.
“We found something from Imogen’s estate office.”
Stellan looked.
Corsaro-owned laptop.
Temporary synchronization folder.
Deleted but recoverable.
Three files.
One photograph.
A little girl standing outside a red-brick school building.
Around eight years old.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
Photographed from far away.
Stellan stared.
Not Dulcie.
But similar enough to make his stomach twist.
The girl wore a small gold pendant.
Two circles intertwined.
Exactly like Elena’s.
“Name?”
Noah read the caption from metadata.
“Maeve Hale.”
Stellan frowned.
“Hale.”
No connection.
The second file:
Private investigator invoice.
Subject:
M.H.
Location:
Rhode Island.
The third:
A scanned hospital reference number.
Same birth date as Dulcie.
Different record.
FEMALE INFANT B.
Stellan sat.
Grace said nothing.
He stared at A.
Then B.
Two infants.
Same date.
Same maternity case number.
One became Dulcie Corsaro.
The other vanished from the visible hospital archive forty-eight hours later.
No death certificate.
No public birth registration under Corsaro.
Just:
TRANSFERRED — PROTECTED STATUS.
Stellan looked toward the bedroom upstairs.
His daughter was eating pancakes with a therapist Grace had arranged.
Eight years.
A second infant.
Elena.
Imogen.
The photograph of an eight-year-old girl wearing the matching pendant.
Stellan whispered:
“Who is Maeve Hale?”
No one knew.
Then Grace found one more detail in the investigator invoice.
Client request:
CONFIRM SHE STILL HAS THE NECKLACE.
Not:
Confirm identity.
Not:
Find the girl.
May you like
Imogen already knew who she was.
She was checking whether Maeve still possessed something Elena had given her.
