Chapter 3 - The Ghost Of St. Jude’s
Marcus did not take long. By mid-afternoon, a sleek black courier envelope sat on Grant’s minimalist glass coffee table.
The girls were sitting in the corner of the living room, completely absorbed in a stack of picture books Grant had hastily ordered online. Every few minutes, Norah would point at a page and whisper something to Hazel, who would offer a tiny, cautious smile. They seemed safe here, shielded from the cold rain and the ugly reality of the streets. But inside Grant, a storm was brewing.
He picked up the envelope, his fingers trembling slightly as he broke the wax seal.
Inside were two sets of documents.
The first was a dossier on the woman from the alley: Evelyn Vance. A petty criminal, drug user, and former nurse’s aide at St. Jude’s Hospital.
The second document made the room tilt sideways.
It was a certified copy of an internal hospital ledger from October, five years ago.
Grant’s late wife, Elena, had been rushed to St. Jude’s during a severe prenatal crisis. Grant had been kept waiting in a sterile white waiting room for fourteen agonizing hours. Finally, his mother, Beatrice Whitmore, along with the attending physician, Dr. Aris Thorne, had walked out with solemn faces.
“I’m sorry, Grant,” his mother had said, her hand resting heavy and cold on his shoulder. “The complications were too severe. The babies... both little girls... were stillborn. They didn't take a breath.”
Grant had believed her. He had buried his grief in work, building an empire of glass and steel, letting the silence swallow him whole because the pain of what had been lost was too vast to navigate.
He looked down at the hospital ledger in his hands.
Written in faded blue ink, next to Elena Whitmore’s chart, were two crossed-out words: Deceased (Disposed). But beneath the official stamp, written in a cramped, hurried handwriting, was a nurse’s personal note:
“Infants stable. Transferred to ward B under administrative orders of B. Whitmore. Cash settlement received by E. Vance.”
B. Whitmore.
Beatrice Whitmore. His own mother.
Grant dropped the papers. They fluttered down like dead leaves onto the hardwood floor.
His mother—the woman who had wept with him at the funeral home, the woman who had comforted him, the woman who controlled the family estate—had lied. She hadn't just lied; she had orchestrated a theft. She had taken his newborn daughters, declared them dead, paid off a nurse named Evelyn Vance to spirit them away, and left Grant to rot in his own grief.
Why?
The question echoed in his skull like a gunshot. Why would his own mother steal his children?
On the rug, Norah looked up from her book, her big dark eyes locking onto Grant’s pale, trembling face. She tilted her head, exactly the way Elena used to when she sensed Grant was holding back his pain.
“Grant?” Norah asked softly. “Are you sick?”
May you like
Grant swallowed the lump in his throat, forced a tight, breaking smile, and walked over to them. He dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around both girls, pulling them close against his chest. They felt fragile, like spun glass, but they were warm. They were real.
“No, sweetheart,” Grant whispered, a tear finally escaping his eye and landing in Norah’s dark hair. “I was sick. For a very long time. But I think... I think I’m finally starting to heal.”
