Chapter 2 - Evelyn Finally Names The Stranger
The horn sounded again outside.
Nobody in Robert’s living room moved.
Alicia still wore her wedding dress. Her veil had slipped over one shoulder, and the sealed investigator’s folder lay open beside the fifty-two-thousand-dollar wedding invoice.
Robert pointed at the courthouse photograph. “Mom. Who is he?”
Evelyn’s hands trembled. “His name is Thomas Mercer.”
The private investigator, Daniel Ross, looked up sharply. “You know Thomas Mercer?”
Evelyn nodded.
Robert’s face hardened. “What was he doing here the night Alicia was born?”
Evelyn lowered herself onto the sofa. Twenty-seven years earlier, Alicia had not been born in a hospital. Her mother, Caroline, had gone into labor unexpectedly during a winter storm while staying at Evelyn’s house.
Robert had been driving back from a business trip. A local physician arrived first.
Then Thomas Mercer.
He was Caroline’s attorney.
Robert stared. “Caroline never had an attorney.”
“She did.”
“For what?”
Evelyn’s eyes filled. “A custody agreement.”
Alicia whispered, “Custody of who?”
“You.”
Evelyn explained that Caroline had briefly dated another man while separated from Robert before their marriage. When Alicia was born, that man claimed he might be the biological father.
Thomas arrived with documents intended to protect the newborn until paternity could be privately resolved.
Caroline never signed them. Complications after delivery sent her to the hospital, and months later she told Evelyn the matter was finished.
Robert never knew.
“Who was the man?” Alicia asked.
Evelyn shook her head. “I never met him.”
Daniel slid another record from the folder.
Thomas Mercer was trustee of the Cole Family Trust.
Nathan Cole—Alicia’s fiancé—was a beneficiary.
So was someone else.
Alicia Caroline Bennett.
Alicia read her own name twice.
The trust was worth more than sixty million dollars.
The man she was supposed to marry shared a family trust with her.
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Then the doorbell rang.
Nathan had arrived.
