Chapter 3 - The Woman Named RachelBy midnight, my father’s house had become a crime scene.
I never imagined I would use those words.
Not about the dining room where we had eaten Christmas dinners.
Not about the kitchen where my mother had taught me to bake apple pie.
Not about the staircase where I had posed in my prom dress while Dad complained we were going to be late.
But yellow evidence markers now sat beside the broken phone, the giant jar, strands of Grandma’s gray hair, and a tiny smear of blood on the buffet cabinet.
Noah was transported to St. Catherine’s Children’s Hospital.
Grandma went too.
I followed in my car after giving a statement.
Dad and Melissa stayed behind with police.
I didn’t know whether they were being arrested.
At that moment, I didn’t care.
I wanted Noah safe.
His examination lasted almost three hours.
A pediatrician named Dr. Evelyn Park eventually came into the waiting room where Grandma and I sat together.
Grandma’s forehead had been cleaned and closed with four small stitches.
She looked exhausted.
I stood the moment Dr. Park approached.
“Is he okay?”
“He’s stable.”
My knees weakened.
I sat again.
Dr. Park continued gently.
“He appears dehydrated, and he is slightly below the weight we would expect based on the age you gave us.”
Grandma pressed her fingers against her lips.
“Is he hurt?”
“We’re doing additional tests. I can’t make assumptions yet.”
She hesitated.
“There’s another issue.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“We don’t have reliable medical records.”
I explained everything Dad had told us.
A baby named Noah.
Born three weeks earlier.
Mother named Rachel.
Rachel supposedly signed guardianship to Dad.
Dr. Park listened.
Then she asked, “Did you ever meet this Rachel?”
“No.”
Grandma answered at the same time.
“No.”
I thought back.
I had accepted Dad’s story because our relationship had been distant for years.
He called me the morning Noah supposedly came home.
“I have a surprise,” he said.
Then he showed me a newborn over FaceTime.
I had been stunned.
Dad told me the pregnancy had been unexpected.
He said the mother didn’t want publicity because of his business reputation.
I thought the secrecy was ridiculous.
But Dad had always been secretive.
Now every strange detail felt sinister.
At 2:40 a.m., Officer Mason arrived at the hospital.
She wasn’t alone.
A woman in a navy blazer introduced herself as Detective Elena Torres.
“We need to ask you both some questions.”
Grandma squeezed my hand.
Detective Torres opened a notebook.
“When did Daniel first tell you about the child?”
I gave her the timeline.
She wrote everything down.
“Did he ever show you a birth certificate?”
“No.”
“Hospital paperwork?”
“No.”
“Photographs from the birth?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see the baby wearing a hospital identification band?”
I stopped.
I remembered something.
“The first day.”
Torres looked up.
“What about it?”
“When Dad showed Noah to me on video, there was a little plastic band around his ankle.”
“Could you read it?”
“No.”
“But you have the video?”
“It was FaceTime.”
“Any screenshots?”
Maybe.
I checked my phone.
I had taken one.
There it was.
Dad holding Noah near the nursery window.
The baby’s ankle was partly visible.
Detective Torres enlarged the photograph.
She stared.
“What?”
I asked.
She zoomed further.
The band wasn’t clear enough to read completely.
But two letters were visible.
B.Y.
Torres looked at me.
“Was Rachel’s last name Young?”
“No. Dad said Rachel Stevens.”
Torres sent herself a copy with my permission.
Then she asked something that made Grandma straighten.
“Does the name Lauren Byers mean anything to either of you?”
“No.”
Grandma shook her head.
Torres wrote again.
I asked, “Why?”
She closed the notebook.
“There was a missing-person report filed twenty-two days ago by the parents of a pregnant woman named Lauren Byers.”
My skin prickled.
“How pregnant?”
“Thirty-nine weeks.”
Grandma whispered, “Oh God.”
Torres continued.
“Lauren was last seen leaving a prenatal appointment.”
“Did they find her?”
“No.”
“What does that have to do with Noah?”
Torres chose her words carefully.
“We don't know that it has anything to do with him.”
But she didn’t need to say more.
The initials.
The timing.
The missing paperwork.
I felt nauseated.
“Could Noah be her baby?”
“We’re investigating every possibility.”
Grandma whispered, “Daniel would never…”
But she couldn’t finish.
Because none of us knew what Daniel would or wouldn’t do anymore.
At 4:00 a.m., police obtained emergency access to portions of the home security archive.
Detective Torres returned forty minutes later.
Her expression told me she had found something.
“Caroline, I need you to prepare yourself.”
I stood.
“Did you see the jar recording?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t the first disturbing video.”
Grandma went pale.
Torres pulled a chair closer.
“The dining room camera retains fourteen days of footage.”
I didn’t want to ask.
But I did.
“What did Melissa do?”
“There are repeated incidents of inappropriate handling and neglect.”
My hands curled into fists.
“How many?”
“We’re still reviewing.”
“Why?”
Torres frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Why was she doing it?”
“We don't know yet.”
Grandma looked at me.
I remembered Melissa’s phone positioned under the chair.
“She was making videos.”
Torres nodded slowly.
“That possibility is being investigated.”
Then she told us the detail that changed everything again.
Three nights earlier, the dining-room camera captured my father and Melissa arguing.
The audio wasn’t perfect.
But one statement was clear.
Melissa had shouted:
“You promised nobody would ever connect him to Lauren.”
My throat went dry.
Torres continued.
“Your father responded.”
“What did he say?”
She looked directly at me.
“He said, ‘They won’t, as long as you stop filming everything.’”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. Play it.”
“I can’t show you evidence during an active investigation.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Caroline—”
“My father knew?”
“We don’t know what he knew.”
“He said nobody would connect Noah to Lauren.”
“That’s why we’re investigating.”
I walked away from them.
The hospital corridor stretched ahead, bright and sterile and impossibly quiet.
Dad had known Lauren’s name.
He had lied.
But even then, some desperate part of me searched for another explanation.
Maybe Lauren had willingly given Dad the baby.
Maybe she had disappeared afterward.
Maybe Dad was protecting her privacy.
Maybe.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Something made me answer.
“Hello?”
For a moment there was only breathing.
Then a woman whispered, “Is this Caroline Mercer?”
“Yes.”
She started crying.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Jenna Byers.”
I froze.
“Byers?”
“Lauren is my sister.”
I couldn’t speak.
She continued through sobs.
“The police gave us your name because they found a possible connection.”
I looked toward Detective Torres.
She was watching me.
Jenna said, “Please tell me something.”
“What?”
“Does the baby have a birthmark?”
I looked through the nursery glass toward Noah.
“Where?”
“Behind his left ear.”
The world tilted.
I gripped the wall.
“Yes.”
Jenna made a sound I will never forget.
Half sob.
Half laugh.
“Oh my God.”
She cried harder.
“That’s him.”
I whispered, “How do you know?”
“Because it runs in our family. Lauren has the exact same mark. So does our mother.”
I closed my eyes.
Jenna said, “Caroline, if that baby is Lauren’s, then your father knows what happened to my sister.”
The call ended twenty minutes later.
I barely remembered the rest.
At sunrise, Detective Torres told us Dad had been detained for questioning but not charged.
Melissa had been arrested for assaulting Grandma and suspected child endangerment.
That should have made me feel relieved.
It didn’t.
Because shortly after seven, detectives searched my father’s detached garage.
And behind a locked storage cabinet they found a woman’s purse.
Inside were car keys.
Prenatal vitamins.
A wallet.
And a driver’s license belonging to twenty-eight-year-old Lauren Byers.
But Lauren herself was nowhere in the house.
The only other thing in the purse was a folded receipt from a motel almost sixty miles away.
Dated four days after Lauren disappeared.
May you like
And written across the back, in my father’s handwriting, were four words:
SHE CAN’T COME BACK YET.
Related Stories
