“My mother-in-law was working with my father?”
“Yes.”
Natalie stared at him.
“You never told me.”
“I didn't know until years later.”
“What happened to Robert?” I asked.
Malcolm looked at me.
“His accident was an accident.”
“You answered too quickly.”
“It was.”
“Then why were you afraid of him?”
“I wasn't afraid.”
Mara suddenly laughed.
Everyone looked at her.
“You were terrified of Robert Holloway.”
Malcolm's face hardened.
Mara continued.
“I saw Diane's recordings.”
“What recordings?”
“She taped you.”
Natalie's hand flew to her mouth.
Mara looked at me.
“Diane recorded dozens of conversations before she disappeared.”
“Where?”
“That's what key 6031 was supposed to lead us to.”
“We found records.”
“Not everything.”
The brass tag contained another clue.
6031 was not only the storage-unit number.
Six.
Zero.
Three.
One.
June 3, 2001.
The date Robert Holloway filed his first complaint against St. Catherine's Medical Center.
Thomas searched archived court files.
The complaint had been dismissed.
But attached to it was an address.
An abandoned medical records building beneath the hospital's original west wing.
St. Catherine's had renovated over it years earlier.
The rooms still existed.
Two days later, a search warrant was executed.
Police found filing cabinets sealed behind drywall.
Dozens of original birth ledgers.
Photographs.
Cash-payment records.
And videotapes.
One tape had my father's name written on it.
I watched it in an interview room beside Natalie and Thomas.
Robert appeared on screen.
Younger than I remembered him.
He was sitting across from a woman.
Diane.
Natalie's mother.
My father spoke first.
“If something happens to either of us, the copies cannot stay together.”
Diane nodded.
“What about Malcolm?”
“He doesn't know how much we have.”
“He suspects.”
“He always suspects.”
Diane looked exhausted.
Then my father said something that made every hair on my arms rise.
“There is one child we have to protect first.”
Diane nodded.
“The Holloway boy.”
My breath stopped.
The recording was dated 1988.
I was two years old.
Natalie grabbed my hand.
On the television, Diane asked:
“Does Robert know the truth?”
My father smiled sadly.
“I am Robert.”
Diane shook her head.
“You know what I mean.”
He became serious.
“No.”
“Are you ever going to tell him?”
“When he's old enough.”
The tape ended.
I sat frozen.
“What truth?”
Thomas found the answer three hours later.
My birth certificate had been altered.
My mother had given birth at St. Catherine's.
The original paperwork listed another surname before HOLLOWAY replaced it.
For several terrible hours I believed I had been one of the stolen children.
Then DNA testing gave us a different answer.
Robert Holloway was my biological father.
My mother was my biological mother.
But my original file had been deliberately marked for transfer.
My parents discovered the network because someone had tried to take me.
Robert stopped it.