Chapter 17 - My Father Chose the Archive Over Me
Labor stopped after magnesium, fluids, and six hours of doctors telling me to breathe.
My baby stayed inside me.
For the moment.
Daniel sat beside the hospital bed with soot still under his fingernails.
Neither of us spoke about our fathers for almost an hour.
Finally I said, “He used the fire.”
Daniel nodded.
“My father set it.”
“Mine took the archive while everyone ran toward the smoke.”
“Yes.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Maybe they deserve each other.”
Rosa arrived with Eleanor and Evelyn separately, because apparently even after attempted murder and kidnapping the twins could not sit in the same car.
Eleanor looked smaller without Blackthorn House behind her.
“I am sorry,” she said.
I stared.
“For which decade?”
She accepted that.
Evelyn stood near the wall.
“I am not asking forgiveness.”
“Good.”
“I am asking to help stop Robert.”
“You pushed me off a roof.”
“Yes.”
“You do not get points for honesty.”
“No.”
That was strangely more tolerable than excuses.
Rosa placed a folder on my bed.
“Your father left this in the church before he vanished.”
Inside was a handwritten map.
Old Cincinnati river tunnels.
Daniel recognized one mark.
“Vale Meridian had a document storage facility under the old warehouse district.”
Eleanor said, “Robert shut it twenty years ago.”
Evelyn smiled without humor.
“Robert never shut anything. He moved it underground.”
A note from my father was clipped to the map.
IF ROBERT GETS THE ARCHIVE, HE WILL DESTROY THE PATIENT OWNERSHIP FILES AND KEEP THE CRIMINAL RECORDS. HE WANTS EVERYONE ELSE GUILTY AND HIMSELF RICH.
That fit Robert perfectly.
Then I saw the second page.
A legal transfer.
My father had reassigned control of his entire estate to a trust for my unborn daughter.
Effective the moment labor began.
Daniel read it twice.
“He activated the transfer tonight.”
“So?”
“The estate includes his voting proxy in Vale Meridian.”
“How did my father have a voting proxy?”
Eleanor answered quietly.
“Robert gave it to him years ago as collateral for keeping the trial records private.”
I felt sick.
My father had not only investigated the Vales.
He had profited from their fear.
Rosa whispered, “Samuel told himself it gave him leverage.”
“It gave him shares.”
“Yes.”
Another clean hero became gray.
I was getting used to it.
Daniel’s phone rang.
My father.
I answered.
“Where are you?”
“Below the city.”
“Are you with Robert?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep him from destroying the archive.”
“Then bring it to police.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because if the archive goes public in its current form, twelve innocent doctors and three hundred former patients lose protected medical identities.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course the truth had another hostage.
My father continued.
“There is one clean copy. Redacted. Safe to release.”
“Where?”
A pause.
At the hospital, Eleanor sat outside my room and refused coffee because her hands would not stop shaking. I watched her through the glass. Daniel asked whether I hated her. I said yes. He nodded. I admitted I also felt sorry for her. He said that was allowed. I said I did not like it. Also allowed. Later Eleanor came in and told me she had convinced herself every bad decision was temporary until the family was safe. I asked when she had planned to stop. She looked at me for a long time and said, “I don’t know.” That answer frightened her more than it frightened me. For the first time, I saw not a monster but a woman who had practiced survival until she could no longer recognize the moment survival became cruelty.
“Inside the brass key.”
Rosa looked up sharply.
The key Evelyn had stolen.
And Evelyn was standing in my hospital room.
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