For several seconds, nobody moved.
Chapter 2
PART 2 - ROOM SEVEN AND THE CROFT BLOODLINE
3,475 words
The two tiny heartbeats continued pulsing across the monitor.
One.
Two.
Perfect little flashes of light.
And behind Simon, federal agents stood in the doorway holding evidence that my husband had once tried to send my embryos to another woman.
Not Madelyn.
Gideon’s dead wife.
I stared at the agent holding the file.
Then I looked at Gideon.
The warmth vanished from the room.
“What did he say?”
My voice sounded distant.
The lead agent, a broad-shouldered woman with iron-gray hair, closed the evidence box.
“Mrs. Vale, we should continue this conversation somewhere private.”
“No.”
I sat up on the examination table.
The paper beneath me crackled.
“I want to hear it here.”
Simon gave a broken laugh.
It was the first sound he had made since seeing the ultrasound.
“Ask him,” he said.
His eyes were fixed on Gideon.
“Ask your generous neighbor why he was watching us in
the first place.”
Gideon didn’t flinch.
“Simon.”
“No, go ahead.”
Simon’s lips twisted.
“Tell her.”
Evelyn stepped forward.
“Simon, you are being detained pending—”
“Tell her whose idea the fertility clinic was.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
That frightened me more than Simon’s shouting.
I had seen Gideon calm while examining forged deeds.
Calm while discussing millions of dollars stolen through shell companies.
Calm when federal agents appeared.
Now, for the first time, there was something behind his eyes that looked almost like dread.
I turned to him.
“Whose idea was it?”
The room went still.
Finally, Gideon said, “Mine.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Years ago.”
He took one slow breath.
“My wife, Clara, and I created the foundation together. After several unsuccessful pregnancies, she wanted to build clinics where patients would never be treated the way she had been.”
Simon snorted.
“That’s a beautiful version.”
Gideon ignored him.
“We funded research.
Staff. Patient assistance programs. Eventually we began acquiring fertility centers.”
“Including mine?”
“Yes.”
The word cut straight through me.
I stared at him.
“You owned the clinic where Simon and I were being treated?”
“Through the foundation.”
“And you never told me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Before Gideon could answer, Simon raised both hands while an agent cuffed him.
“Because he knew who you were.”
My mouth went dry.
Gideon’s gaze sharpened.
“Stop talking.”
Simon laughed again.
“Oh, now you want silence?”
He looked at me.
“He knew exactly who you were long before he walked across that road pretending to be the kindly old sheriff.”
“Simon,” Evelyn warned.
But he was past fear.
Or perhaps he understood that fear no longer mattered.
“He bought the farmhouse across from us eight months before he supposedly met you.”
I looked at Gideon.
“That isn’t true.”
Gideon said nothing.
My pulse began pounding.
“Tell
me that isn’t true.”
Still nothing.
Simon smiled.
And suddenly I hated that smile because I knew what it meant.
He had found the crack.
The one place where he could still hurt me.
“He was watching,” Simon said softly. “Wasn’t he, Gideon?”
Gideon’s face hardened.
“For reasons that had nothing to do with her.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
The agents started leading Simon out.
He twisted around before crossing the doorway.
“Ask him about Room Seven.”
Gideon went pale.
Not visibly enough for anyone who didn’t know him.
But I knew him now.
I had spent six months learning the small movements of his face.
The slight narrowing of his eyes when someone lied.
The way his left hand closed when he was angry.
The almost invisible tightening around his mouth when he was afraid.
Room Seven frightened him.
Simon saw that I noticed.
His smile widened.
“Ask him who was in Room Seven, Rachel.”
Then the agents took him away.
The door closed.
The silence afterward seemed louder than anything Simon had said.
I looked at Gideon.
“Who was in Room Seven?”
He did not answer.
Evelyn moved toward me.
“Rachel, your blood pressure—”
“Who was in Room Seven?”
Gideon lowered his eyes.
“Clara.”
His late wife.
The woman whose name I had heard only a handful of times.
The woman he had loved.
The woman Simon had allegedly tried to send my embryos to.
I slid off the examination table.
“What happened?”
Gideon looked at the ultrasound screen instead of me.
“Not here.”
“No.”
My voice sharpened.
“You brought me here. You paid for this. You knew my medical history before I knew yours. You knew Simon was lying. You lived across the street from us for years.”
“Eight months.”
“What?”
“I lived there eight months before Simon left you.”
My lungs tightened.
“So Simon was telling the truth.”
“I bought the property because Simon was under investigation.”
“You investigated him?”
“Not officially.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
That was when I understood she knew too.
I turned toward her.
“You knew.”
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You two seem to know everything except how to tell me the truth.”
Gideon stepped closer.
I moved back.
That stopped him immediately.
His expression changed.
Not anger.
Pain.
I almost hated him for that too.
“You have every right to leave,” he said.
“I have nowhere to go.”
“You have the farmhouse.”
“Your farmhouse.”
“No.”
He reached into his coat.
Evelyn stiffened, but Gideon only pulled out a folded document.
He placed it on the counter.
I did not touch it.
“What is that?”
“The deed.”
“To what?”
“The house.”
I stared at him.
“It was transferred into your name three weeks ago.”
My head snapped up.
“You gave me your house?”
“The house across from Simon’s.”
“Why?”
“Because Simon’s attorneys filed a motion claiming you were financially dependent on me.”
I laughed again.
“So you solved that by giving me real estate?”
“Partly.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you are not homeless. You are not dependent on me. The property belongs to you outright. No lien. No trust. No conditions.”
My eyes burned.
I refused to cry.
Not here.
Not in front of Gideon.
Not after discovering that the one person who had made me feel safe had also been keeping secrets.
“What was in Room Seven?”
This time Gideon answered.
“An unauthorized embryo transfer.”
My body went cold.
Evelyn spoke carefully.
“Rachel, you should sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re carrying twins.”
“I know exactly what I’m carrying.”
Nobody spoke.
That sentence seemed to disturb Gideon.
Good.
I wanted him disturbed.
He had disturbed everything else.
“Tell me.”
He leaned against the wall.
For the first time since I had known him, Gideon Croft looked old.
Not weak.
Old.
As if the years he carried had finally become visible.
“Seven years ago, Clara and I were still trying to have a child. We were using our own clinic because she trusted the embryology team. One night, she was admitted unexpectedly for what she believed was a scheduled transfer.”
“What do you mean believed?”
“She had been told we had one viable embryo remaining.”
“And you didn’t?”
“No.”
His voice turned quieter.
“Ours had stopped developing.”
I felt something shift inside me.
Not the twins.
Something worse.
“Then what did they transfer?”
Gideon looked directly at me.
“Someone else’s embryo.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Mine?”
“We don’t know.”
Simon’s accusation hung between us.
The listed recipient was not Madelyn.
It was Gideon’s late wife.
I pressed my palm against the edge of the examination table.
“You said Simon ordered my embryos transferred.”
“He submitted fraudulent consent documents requesting transfer of two embryos to an outside recipient.”
“Clara.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know whether the clinic actually did it?”
“We know an unauthorized transfer occurred.”
“Was she pregnant?”
Gideon’s eyes closed briefly.
“Yes.”
My breath stopped.
“How far along?”
“Nineteen weeks.”
“What happened?”
He did not answer quickly enough.
I already knew the ending.
“She lost the baby.”
“Yes.”
Something inside my chest twisted.
“How?”
“Placental abruption.”
“And that was when you started investigating?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Clara knew something was wrong.”
“With the pregnancy?”
“With the clinic.”
He looked toward the floor.
“The night before she died, she told me she had heard two staff members arguing outside Room Seven. One said the paperwork could destroy the foundation. The other said Simon had already paid.”
My skin prickled.
“Simon?”
“At the time, I didn’t know who he was.”
“But later you did.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“After Clara died, I had the embryo-transfer records examined.”
“And?”
“They had been altered.”
“By Simon?”
“By someone helping him.”
“The clinic administrator.”
“One of them.”
One of them.
I caught that immediately.
“How many people were involved?”
“That is what we are still trying to determine.”
I looked at Evelyn.
“And instead of going to the police?”
Gideon answered.
“I went to federal investigators.”
“You were a federal marshal.”
“Former.”
“Then why are we standing here seven years later?”
His face became unreadable.
“Because someone killed the first investigator assigned to the case.”
The room went silent.
Even Evelyn stopped moving.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“His vehicle went over an embankment outside Frederick.”
“You think Simon killed him?”
“No.”
That answer surprised me.
“Then who?”
“We don’t know.”
I thought about Simon.
His arrogance.
His cruelty.
His stolen money.
His forged signatures.
He was capable of terrible things.
But murder?
Perhaps.
Yet Gideon’s certainty bothered me.
“You said Simon didn’t do it.”
“I said I don’t believe he did.”
“Why?”
“Because Simon was never the most important person in the scheme.”
A chill crawled over my arms.
“Who was?”
Gideon looked toward the ultrasound monitor.
“I don’t know yet.”
That was the first answer I believed without reservation.
Because he hated admitting it.
---
Simon’s arrest made the evening news.
Fraud.
Identity theft.
Financial conspiracy.
Obstruction.
Potential medical crimes.
His photograph appeared under every headline.
Madelyn disappeared from social media within hours.
Simon’s mother called me seventeen times.
I answered the eighteenth.
“You need to fix this.”
Those were her first words.
Not hello.
Not how are you.
Not I’m sorry.
I stood in Gideon’s kitchen—my kitchen now, apparently—with the phone against my ear.
“Fix what?”
“Simon is your husband.”
“Not for much longer.”
“You know how frightened he gets when he feels trapped.”
I almost smiled.
Simon had always loved his mother’s habit of turning his cruelty into vulnerability.
“He should feel trapped.”
There was a sharp inhale.
“You vindictive little—”
“Did you know?”
Silence.
“Know what?”
“About his infertility.”
The silence changed.
That was answer enough.
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“You knew.”
“Rachel—”
“For six years?”
“It was private medical information.”
“His mother knew but his wife didn’t?”
“He was ashamed.”
I laughed bitterly.
“And making me believe I was defective made him feel better?”
“He loved you.”
“No.”
“He did.”
“No, he loved having someone he could blame.”
She started crying.
I felt nothing.
Then she said something strange.
“You were never supposed to find the Crofts.”
My entire body went still.
“What did you say?”
The crying stopped.
She realized her mistake.
“Nothing.”
“You said I was never supposed to find the Crofts.”
“I’m upset.”
“You know Gideon?”
The call ended.
I stared at the phone.
Then turned around.
Gideon was standing in the doorway.
His dog, Murphy, sat beside him.
“How long were you there?”
“Long enough.”
“Did you hear her?”
“Yes.”
“You know what she meant?”
“No.”
I studied his face.
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
That was the problem with Gideon.
I was beginning to recognize when he lied.
I was also beginning to recognize when he truly had no answer.
And this time, he looked troubled.
Not guilty.
Troubled.
“Why would Simon’s mother know your family?”
“She shouldn’t.”
“But she does.”
“Yes.”
Gideon pulled out his phone.
He called Evelyn.
She answered immediately.
“Pull everything on Lorraine Vale,” he said. “Employment history, maiden name, prior residences, medical records we can legally access.”
He listened.
Then his expression changed.
“What year?”
Silence.
His eyes found mine.
“What hospital?”
Another silence.
“Send it.”
He ended the call.
“What?”
Gideon lowered the phone.
“Lorraine worked as a nurse.”
“I know.”
“At Saint Maren’s Hospital.”
I didn’t understand.
“So?”
“That hospital later became the first Croft fertility center.”
My skin prickled.
“When?”
“Twenty-nine years ago.”
I stared at him.
“That’s before Simon.”
“Yes.”
“No. Simon is thirty-eight.”
“I know.”
“Then why does it matter?”
Gideon’s phone vibrated.
He looked at the message.
For the first time, I saw genuine shock cross his face.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward me.
It was an employment record.
Lorraine Vale.
Registered nurse.
Reproductive endocrinology.
Then underneath:
Supervisor: Dr. Elias Croft.
I looked at Gideon.
“Who is Elias Croft?”
His voice was barely above a whisper.
“My father.”
---
The following morning, Evelyn arrived with four bankers’ boxes.
She looked as though she had not slept.
Neither had I.
Gideon stood at the kitchen window staring across the road at the home Simon had locked me out of six months earlier.
The property was under federal seizure now.
A yellow notice had been placed across the front door.
Funny.
Simon had once stood on that porch and told me I was good at being alone.
Now the house itself looked abandoned.
Evelyn placed the first box down.
“We have a problem.”
Gideon turned.
“What?”
“Your father’s foundation records are incomplete.”
“How incomplete?”
“Twenty-three years.”
He frowned.
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought so too.”
She opened the second box.
“Then I found these in an off-site archive under Clara’s maiden name.”
Gideon’s posture changed.
“What are they?”
“Patient ledgers.”
“From Saint Maren’s?”
“Yes.”
She opened the folder.
The pages were old.
Handwritten.
Numbers.
Names.
Dates.
Some sections had been redacted with thick black ink.
Evelyn slid one page toward Gideon.
His face drained.
I walked closer.
“What?”
He did not respond.
I looked down.
There were patient numbers.
Donor numbers.
Embryo-storage identification codes.
Then I saw a name.
Lorraine Mercer.
Simon’s mother.
Beside her name was a notation.
DONOR CYCLE 14.
I looked at Evelyn.
“What does that mean?”
“She donated eggs.”
“When?”
“Thirty-nine years ago.”
My stomach turned.
“Before Simon was born.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“Those eggs were used in multiple fertilization attempts.”
“With Simon’s father?”
“No.”
I looked at Gideon.
His eyes remained fixed on the ledger.
“Whose sperm?”
Evelyn pushed another record forward.
The donor field contained only initials.
E.C.
I stopped breathing.
Gideon did not move.
“Elias Croft,” I whispered.
“We don’t know that yet,” Evelyn said.
But nobody believed her.
Gideon stepped away from the table.
He looked almost physically ill.
I finally understood.
“If Elias Croft was the donor…”
Gideon stared at the wall.
“And Lorraine was the egg donor…”
I couldn’t finish.
Evelyn did it for me.
“Then Simon may be Gideon’s biological half-brother.”
The kitchen became unbearably quiet.
I thought of Simon’s face.
Gideon’s.
No resemblance.
Then again, Simon looked like his mother.
And Gideon had inherited his father’s height.
His shoulders.
His eyes.
I had seen Elias Croft’s portrait at the medical center.
The same steady gray eyes.
Gideon laughed once.
A hollow sound.
“Get a DNA warrant.”
Evelyn nodded.
“I already requested one.”
“And my father?”
“Dead twelve years.”
“Exhumation?”
“We may not need it.”
She looked at me.
“Simon’s DNA was entered into federal evidence after his arrest.”
I wrapped my arms around myself.
Suddenly the strange connection between Simon and the Croft foundation felt less like coincidence.
More like design.
“If Simon knew Gideon was his brother…”
“He may have believed he had a claim on the Croft fortune,” Evelyn said.
Gideon looked sharply at her.
“He doesn’t.”
“I know that.”
“Then why steal Rachel’s embryos?”
Nobody answered.
That question followed us for the next three days.
Then the DNA results came back.
Simon Vale was not Gideon’s half-brother.
He was Gideon’s nephew.
That result made even less sense.
Until Evelyn requested another set of archived records.
And discovered that Elias Croft had not been the donor listed as E.C.
The donor was Gideon’s older brother.
Edmund Croft.
A man Gideon had never once mentioned.
Because Edmund had supposedly died before Gideon was born.
Except he hadn’t.
The death certificate was fraudulent.
The real Edmund Croft had lived under another name for decades.
A name I knew.
Dr. Everett Colson.
The fertility specialist who had treated Simon and me during the first four years of our marriage.
The man who had looked me in the eye after every failed procedure.
The man who told me my embryos had been destroyed.
The man who had quietly assured Simon that infertility was “complex” whenever I begged for answers.
I felt sick.
“He knew,” I whispered.
Gideon stood beside me in Evelyn’s office, frozen in front of the photograph on her screen.
Dr. Everett Colson.
Edmund Croft.
His brother.
Simon’s biological father.
My fertility doctor.
All the same man.
“But why?” I asked.
Evelyn didn’t answer.
She was reading something else.
A file.
Her brow furrowed.
Then she looked at me.
“What?”
She turned the laptop around.
It was an old patient-registration form.
Twenty-eight years old.
At first I didn’t recognize the name.
Then I did.
And every sound in the room disappeared.
Patient:
Anne Rachel Merritt.
My mother.
I grabbed the edge of the desk.
“No.”
Gideon stepped closer.
“What is it?”
“My mother’s name was Anne Merritt.”
Evelyn searched another database.
Her hands moved faster.
I couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
My mother had died when I was eleven.
She had never told me she used fertility treatment.
She had told me I had been a surprise.
A miracle.
Evelyn found a birth record.
Rachel Anne Merritt.
My birthday.
My hospital.
My mother.
Then beneath it—
Assisted conception.
Donor embryo.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
The word came out like a child’s whisper.
Gideon stared at the screen.
Evelyn opened the next archived ledger.
She found the donor code.
Her hand froze.
“What?”
Neither of them answered.
“Evelyn.”
She looked at Gideon.
Then at me.
“This cannot be right.”
“What?”
She rotated the screen.
The embryo donor identification was old, but the initials were unmistakable.
E.C.
My knees almost gave out.
“No.”
Gideon caught my arm.
I jerked away from him.
“No.”
“Rachel—”
“You said E.C. was Edmund Croft.”
“Yes.”
I could barely force out the next words.
“Then Edmund Croft could be my biological father.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Not necessarily.”
“But possible.”
“Yes.”
My thoughts collided.
Simon.
His biological father.
My biological father.
No.
No.
That would mean—
Evelyn read my face.
“Rachel, donor codes can be reused between gamete and embryo records. We need genetic testing before drawing conclusions.”
“Test me.”
“We will.”
“Now.”
Gideon’s voice was low.
“Do it.”
Evelyn arranged the test that afternoon.
The results came back four days later.
I sat alone when I opened them.
Gideon had offered to stay.
I told him no.
I needed one moment of my life that didn’t belong to someone else’s investigation.
One moment where the truth came only to me.
The laboratory report was six pages.
I skipped to the relationship analysis.
Simon Vale and Rachel Merritt Vale:
No close biological relationship detected.
I covered my mouth.
Relief hit so hard that I began crying.
Not siblings.
Not cousins.
Nothing close.
Then I kept reading.
Rachel Merritt Vale and Gideon Croft:
Probability of biological relationship: greater than 99.9%.
My heart stopped.
The predicted relationship appeared beneath it.
Half-siblings.
I stared at the word until the letters blurred.
Half-siblings.
Gideon.
My neighbor.
My protector.
The man who had opened his home to me.
The man whose hand I had held while hearing my babies’ heartbeats.
The man whose dead wife had once received an embryo connected to my husband.
My brother.
I sat there for almost ten minutes before I could stand.
Then I walked across the hallway into the conference room.
Gideon was waiting.
One look at my face told him.
“What?”
I handed him the report.
He read it.
His expression did not change at first.
Then he sank into a chair.
“No.”
I sat opposite him.
“Apparently your father had more secrets than either of us knew.”
He read the page again.
“My father?”
“The testing shows we share one parent.”
“My mother never used fertility treatment.”
“Then Elias.”
Silence.
Gideon looked at me.
His eyes were wet.
I had never seen that before.
He whispered, “You’re my sister.”
I laughed.
I cried.
Then, somehow, he did too.
For one brief second, the entire nightmare rearranged itself into something almost beautiful.
The lonely man across the road had not been a stranger after all.
He was family.
Family I had never known existed.
Then Evelyn walked into the room.
And destroyed that comfort in less than thirty seconds.
“There’s another problem.”
Gideon wiped his eyes.
“What now?”
“The twins.”
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