Chapter 11 - The Hospital Photo|
“What is that, Nat?” I asked, looking between my sister and my visibly panicking mother.
Natalie pulled a thick sheaf of yellowed documents from the envelope. Right on top was a glossy, 8x10 photograph, faded around the edges with age.
She handed it to me.
I looked down at the image.
It was a standard hospital post-delivery photograph, stamped with a official seal dated exactly twenty-nine years ago today—the exact date of my birth.
The photo showed a hospital bed in a sunlit room. A radiant, beautiful young woman with dark curls and deep hazel eyes was lying in the bed, smiling tiredly while cradling a tiny, red-faced newborn wrapped in a blue hospital blanket.
Beside the bed stood my father, looking younger, his face flushed with tears of pure, unadulterated joy as he leaned down to kiss the woman’s forehead.
I stared at the woman’s face.
She had my eyes. She had the exact shape of my chin. She had the high cheekbones that I saw every single morning when I looked into the bathroom mirror.
She was not Vivian.
Vivian wasn't anywhere in the photograph.
My hands began to shake so violently the photo rattled in my grip. My brain stalled, completely unable to process the visual reality resting in my palms.
“Who... who is this?” I breathed, my heart pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird. “Natalie, who is this woman?”
Natalie looked straight into Vivian’s horrified, pale face before answering me.
“Her name was Sarah Miller,” Natalie said, her voice dripping with absolute venom. “She was Dad’s first wife. She was my biological mother... and Daniel... she was yours, too.”
The hallway seemed to tilt violently on its axis.
“What?” I choked out, stumbling backward against the wall. “No... no, that’s impossible. Vivian is my mother! My birth certificate says—”
“Your birth certificate is a state-certified forgery,” Natalie cut in smoothly, pulling a second paper from the envelope—a certified death certificate stamped twenty-eight years ago. “Sarah died of sudden heart complications three weeks after you were born. Dad was completely destroyed by grief.”
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Natalie took a step closer to Vivian, who was backing up against the kitchen counter, gasping for air.
“And while Dad was drowning in depression,” Natalie hissed, “his sweet, overly eager administrative assistant—Vivian—stepped in. She took care of the house. She took care of the newborn baby. And within six months, she married Dad, legally adopted us, and systematically erased every single trace of Sarah Miller from existence.”
