Chapter 6 - Maren stared at Celestine for so long her eyes began to hurt.
Maren stared at Celestine for so long her eyes began to hurt.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“No. You don’t.”
Maren stood.
“My parents were Daniel and Rebecca Cole. I grew up in Vermont. I went to public school. I have photographs.”
Celestine nodded.
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, you have photographs.”
Maren’s stomach tightened.
Mercer looked at Celestine.
“Are you claiming an entire childhood was fabricated?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then explain.”
Celestine’s hands shook.
“Elena Vale disappeared when she was six.”
Maren stopped.
“The record says she was born seven years before Adrian.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Everett and Lenora told the family she died.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
Celestine looked at Maren.
“She was relocated.”
“Why?”
“Because of what Everett did to her.”
Maren’s mouth went dry.
“What did he do?”
Celestine closed her eyes.
“The early trials weren’t designed for adults.”
Mercer swore under her breath.
Maren felt like the floor had shifted.
“No.”
“Everett wanted to know whether identity could be shaped before autobiographical memory fully formed.”
“No.”
“They used his daughter.”
“Stop calling her his daughter.”
Celestine looked at her.
“You.”
Maren slammed a hand against the wall.
“I said stop.”
Adrian stirred behind the hospital glass.
A nurse glanced toward them.
Mercer lowered her voice.
“Do you have evidence?”
Celestine reached inside the coat.
The officer immediately tensed.
She slowly removed a flash drive.
“I stole this from Kellan.”
Mercer took it.
“What’s on it?”
“Original subject files.”
Maren stared at the tiny device.
“Why didn’t you give this to police before?”
“Because they would kill me.”
“They nearly did anyway.”
“Yes.”
Celestine’s voice cracked.
“And now I have nothing left to lose.”
Mercer took the drive to the cybercrime unit.
They returned to Maren’s apartment under police protection.
Elodie woke at seven.
She asked for cereal.
The ordinary request felt almost surreal.
Maren sat across from her daughter and tried to imagine herself at six.
Not as Maren Cole.
As Elena Vale.
Nothing came.
She remembered snow.
A red sled.
Her mother—Rebecca—making cocoa.
Her father teaching her how to skate.
Were those memories real?
Mercer called at 8:42.
“The drive is authentic.”
Maren’s knees weakened.
“What did you find?”
“Come to the station.”
Maren left Elodie with Adrian, who had been discharged after the implant was removed.
It was the first time Maren willingly trusted him with Elodie since the wedding.
That fact wasn’t lost on either of them.
At the station, Mercer led Maren into an evidence room.
Celestine waited inside.
A screen displayed a scanned file.
SUBJECT E.V.-03.
Maren sat.
Mercer said,
“The earliest file is dated twenty-eight years ago.”
Maren was thirty-four.
Six years old.
Exactly.
The first video had no sound for several seconds.
A little girl sat in a white room.
Dark blond hair.
Green eyes.
Maren’s eyes.
Maren stopped breathing.
The child held a red wooden horse.
A doctor entered.
Thomas Kellan.
Young.
Smiling.
He placed two photographs on a table.
One showed Lenora.
One showed another woman.
“Which one is Mommy?”
The child pointed to Lenora.
Kellan gave her candy.
The video jumped.
Same room.
Same question.
This time the child pointed to the other woman.
Kellan frowned.
A sharp tone played.
The girl covered her ears.
The video cut.
Another session.
“Which one is Mommy?”
Lenora.
Candy.
Again.
Lenora.
Candy.
Maren began crying.
“Turn it off.”
Mercer stopped the video.
Maren covered her face.
Celestine whispered,
“I’m sorry.”
Maren looked at her.
“Who was the other woman?”
Mercer opened another file.
Birth certificate.
ELENA REBECCA VOSS.
Mother: Dr. Helena Evelyn Voss.
Father: Everett James Vale.
Maren stared.
“Helena?”
“The neuropsychologist,” Mercer said.
“Everett had a child with his researcher?”
“Yes.”
“And Lenora raised me?”
“For six years.”
Maren’s voice broke.
“Then why remove me?”
Mercer looked toward Celestine.
Celestine answered.
“Helena wanted to take you away.”
Maren remembered the woman in the old group photograph.
Dead six years ago.
Supposedly.
“Where is she?”
“We don’t know.”
Celestine continued.
“Everett believed Helena had become emotionally compromised. She wanted the trials stopped. She threatened to expose him.”
“So he erased his own daughter?”
“He created Maren Cole.”
Maren shook her head.
“My parents.”
“Daniel and Rebecca Cole were real people.”
“Were they working for him?”
Celestine hesitated.
“Rebecca was Helena’s younger sister.”
Maren stared.
“My mother was my aunt?”
“Yes.”
“And my father?”
“Daniel loved Rebecca. He agreed to disappear with you.”
Maren’s memories of childhood suddenly felt different.
Her parents had always been cautious.
No social media.
No family reunions.
No questions about the Vales.
When Maren was seventeen, Daniel and Rebecca died in a house fire.
Officially electrical.
Maren had been away at a school competition.
She remembered Lenora attending the funeral.
She had thought Lenora was representing a scholarship foundation.
Maren’s stomach turned.
“You found me again.”
Celestine nodded.
“Everett never lost you.”
“He waited until my parents died.”
“Yes.”
“And then Adrian met me.”
“Yes.”
Maren stood so quickly the chair fell.
Mercer caught it.
Maren paced.
“So my half brother—”
She stopped.
Adrian.
Her chest seized.
Celestine immediately shook her head.
“No.”
Maren stared.
“What?”
“Adrian isn’t Everett’s biological son.”
Maren closed her eyes.
Of course.
Another lie.
“Whose son is he?”
“Lenora’s from her first marriage. Everett adopted him at two.”
Maren breathed again.
Barely.
Still horrifying.
Still manipulative.
But not what she had feared.
Mercer opened more documents.
“The program tracked you continuously.”
School records.
Medical records.
College.
Jobs.
Relationships.
Gabriel.
Maren stared at photographs she had never seen.
She and Gabriel on Cape Cod.
Holding hands.
Dancing.
A courthouse.
Wedding license.
Maren Shaw.
She touched the screen.
“That was my name.”
“For eleven months,” Mercer said.
Maren found a photograph of herself visibly pregnant.
Seven months.
Smiling.
Gabriel beside her.
She began crying.
“I don’t remember any of it.”
Then they opened the accident file.
A vehicle crushed against a tree.
Maren unconscious.
Gabriel injured.
Everett standing beside an ambulance.
Not comforting.
Watching.
The medical report showed fetal distress.
Emergency delivery.
Female infant.
Alive.
Iris.
Maren’s knees nearly gave out.
“She was alive.”
“Yes.”
“Where did they take me?”
Celestine answered.
“Blackthorn.”
Maren stared.
“While I was injured?”
“You were held there for four months.”
Four months gone.
Then released into her own life with new memories explaining the missing time as recovery from a miscarriage and nervous breakdown.
Gabriel was told Maren had died.
Maren was told the pregnancy ended.
Iris was placed with Caroline Webb, one of Guardian’s controlled foster-adoption contacts.
Maren pressed her fist against her mouth.
“They stole my baby.”
Mercer nodded.
Maren looked at Celestine.
“Then why did Gabriel stay away?”
“He eventually learned you were alive.”
“When?”
“After you married Adrian.”
Maren closed her eyes.
“So why didn’t he come?”
“Because Everett had Iris.”
Maren understood.
“Leverage.”
“Yes.”
“What changed now?”
Celestine leaned forward.
“Everett died.”
“He died two years ago.”
“Guardian continued without him. But the executors started fighting over control.”
“Kellan. Lenora. And Three.”
“Yes.”
“Why did they start targeting Elodie?”
Celestine looked uncomfortable.
“Because Elodie remembers something.”
“She’s four.”
“She saw someone at Blackthorn.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“What could she possibly have seen?”
Celestine’s eyes filled.
“The night Everett died.”
Maren froze.
“Elodie was two.”
“She was at Blackthorn with Adrian.”
Maren looked at Mercer.
The official report said Everett died of a heart attack in his study.
Celestine shook her head.
“That wasn’t what happened.”
“What happened?”
“He was murdered.”
Maren whispered,
“By whom?”
“Nobody knew.”
“So Elodie witnessed it?”
“Possibly.”
Maren remembered the picture games.
They weren’t only trying to make Elodie forget Maren.
They were searching her memory.
Testing what she retained.
Mercer opened another file.
“This was created six weeks after Everett’s death.”
PROJECT ELODIE.
Goal:
Identify retained visual memory of E.V. termination event.
Maren stared.
“E.V.?”
Mercer looked at her.
“Everett Vale.”
Or Elena Vale.
The initials had been used for both.
Mercer opened the video archive.
A session appeared.
Elodie at two.
Thomas Kellan showed her photographs.
Lenora.
Everett.
Adrian.
Celestine.
Gabriel.
Elodie pointed at one.
“That man made Grandpa sleep.”
Maren leaned closer.
Gabriel.
Her forgotten husband.
Mercer paused the video.
Celestine went white.
Maren whispered,
“Gabriel killed Everett?”
But Mercer noticed something.
“Wait.”
She advanced frame by frame.
Behind Gabriel in the photograph was a mirror.
In the reflection stood a woman.
Only half her face visible.
Maren stared.
She knew that face.
From childhood photographs.
From a life she thought was real.
Rebecca Cole.
Her mother.
Her aunt.
Dead seventeen years.
Maren whispered,
“That can’t be.”
Mercer enlarged the reflection.
Rebecca looked older.
But unmistakable.
The photo had been taken two years ago.
Seventeen years after Rebecca supposedly died in a house fire.
Maren’s entire childhood cracked open again.
May you like
Her mother was alive.
And according to the timestamp, Rebecca had been standing inside Blackthorn House the night Everett Vale was murdered.
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