Chapter 2 - THE FUNERAL HELD BEFORE HER BIRTH.
Eleanor accused Lily of repeating a story taught by someone seeking money.
“A child from nowhere appears at our home and suddenly claims a Mercer inheritance?”
Lily lowered her eyes, but Ethan remained beside her.
“She has a name. Use it.”
A former housekeeper, Ruth Bennett, stepped forward from the staff line and said Lily had been raised at a church shelter outside Baltimore. The woman who brought her there used the name Nora Gray.
Ethan opened the teddy bear’s small back pocket with Lily’s permission. Inside was a hospital bracelet bearing Anna Mercer’s patient number and a birth record dated six months after Anna’s funeral.
Eleanor called the documents fabricated.
Ruth answered, “Poor families bring evidence and are called suspicious. Rich families bring lawyers and are called credible.”
Ethan studied the official seal.
The baby listed on the record was female. The mother was Anna Mercer. The father’s name had been removed.
May you like
Then he noticed the attending physician.
Dr. Charles Mercer—Ethan’s uncle—had signed the record three years after his own reported death.
