Chapter 5 - The Fourth BabyWe didn't sleep.
At six in the morning, June found an old newspaper archive online.
She had been awake the entire night searching hospital records.
"Look."
She turned her laptop toward me.
An article from twenty-two years ago.
The headline said:
TRIPLET BIRTH ENDS IN TRAGEDY
The article described the death of their mother.
But there was something else.
Three infants had been born.
Two minutes apart.
Then a fourth baby had been delivered in the same hospital that night.
A boy.
His mother had died during childbirth.
"What does that have to do with us?" Ava asked.
I stared at the screen.
The hospital had reported a temporary emergency evacuation.
Several records were missing.
Including the nursery log.
June kept scrolling.
"Here's something."
A retired nurse had posted an interview years later.
She claimed that a newborn baby disappeared from the hospital.
The nurse refused to say which one.
The article ended with a sentence:
Authorities concluded the incident was an administrative error.
"Administrative error?" Claire whispered.
"No," I said.
"It wasn't."
I knew that instantly.
Because I remembered something.
The night Martin left the girls on my doorstep, there had been a man standing across the street.
A dark sedan.
A cigarette burning in the rain.
I had assumed it was a neighbor.
But maybe it wasn't.
June looked at me.
"Dad, what if..."
"No."
"What if one of us isn't biologically yours?"
Ava immediately shook her head.
"We're triplets."
"Yes."
"But what if we're not the same triplets?"
The room went silent.
I didn't want to entertain it.
I couldn't.
I had raised these girls.
Their blood didn't matter.
They were mine.
Still, the question stayed.
That afternoon, I went to the hospital where they'd been born.
It had changed names twice since then.
The records department searched for nearly an hour.
Finally, an administrator returned carrying a thin folder.
"I'm sorry," she said. "This is all we have."
Inside were three birth certificates.
Ava.
Claire.
June.
Same mother.
Same birth date.
But there was something strange.
Their times of birth were different.
Ava: 3:14 a.m.
Claire: 3:16 a.m.
June: 3:21 a.m.
I looked at the administrator.
"That's normal."
She nodded.
Then she hesitated.
"Actually..."
"What?"
"There was originally a fourth entry."
My stomach twisted.
"What happened to it?"
"It was removed."
"By whom?"
She looked at the record.
"Dr. Elias Mercer."
I closed my eyes.
Again.
That name.
"Why?"
She pointed to a handwritten note.
TRANSFERRED.
"Transferred where?"
The administrator shook her head.
"No destination listed."
Then she handed me a second page.
It was a photocopy of the original nursery log.
Four names.
Three girls.
One boy.
But the names had been crossed out.
Only the initials remained.
A.C.J.
And one final letter.
M.
Martin.
My brother.
I stared at it.
June whispered:
"Dad..."
I looked up.
Her face was white.
"The boy's mother..."
She pointed at the record.
Her surname was Mercer.
I felt every hair on my arms rise.
May you like
Because that meant Dr. Elias Mercer hadn't been a random doctor.
He had been family.
