Chapter 3: The Name Beneath Her Name
“What is my name?” Mom asked.
The silver-haired woman stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“June Mercer.”
Mom pressed one hand against the banister.
“My name is Rose Bennett.”
“No,” the woman said.
“My name is Rose Mercer.
Brad was engaged to me.
You are my younger sister.”
Dad pointed toward the door.
“Get out of my house.”
Rose did not move.
“It was our house before you changed the deed.”
Dr.
Patel took an envelope from his coat.
“The marker we found carried the initials J.M.
It was placed during an operation at St.
Catherine’s Hospital in October 1978.”
Mom looked at him.
“What kind of operation?”
“The records are incomplete, but the marker was beside an old scar beneath your left arm.”
Mom touched the bandage over her chest.
“I was told that scar came from a childhood fall.”
Rose shook her head.
“It came from the crash.”
Dad moved between them.
“She’s trying to confuse you while you’re weak.”
“Then explain the photograph,” I said.
He turned on me.
“Claire, take your mother upstairs.”
Mom straightened despite the pain.
“I asked you a question, Brad.”
Rose placed her photograph beside the one from the shoebox.
On the back, someone had written: Rose, Brad, and June — Summer 1978.
Mom read it twice.
“Why do we look so much alike?”
“We were sisters, eleven months apart,” Rose said.
“People called us the Mercer twins because we were nearly identical.”
“Where have you been?”
“Trying to make someone believe me.”
Dad gave a bitter laugh.
“She disappeared for decades.
Now she arrives after your operation with a story about stolen names.”
Rose opened her handbag and removed a faded hospital bracelet.
The plastic was yellow with age, but the letters were still visible: ROSE MERCER.
“I woke before June did,” she said.
“I told Brad the nurses had mixed up our bags.
He told them I was confused.”
“That isn’t what happened,” Dad snapped.
“You identified the unconscious woman in the next room as Rose.”
“I made a mistake.”
“No.
You were standing beside me when I said, ‘That’s June.’ You heard every word.”
Mom lowered herself onto the bottom stair.
“Why would my husband do that?”
Rose’s mouth trembled.
“Because June had discovered what he was taking from our father’s company.”
Dad lunged for the bracelet, but Dr.
Patel caught his wrist.
“Don’t touch her evidence.”
“Evidence?” Dad pulled free.
“It’s a piece of old plastic.”
Rose faced Mom.
“You woke with no clear memory of the crash.
Brad called you Rose until you answered.
Then he married you under my name.”
Mom looked at Dad as if the room had tilted.
“Did you know I was June when you married me?”
Dad’s phone began vibrating on the hall table.
He snatched it up and turned the screen down.
My own phone chimed a second later.
It was an alert from the joint account Mom had added me to after her operation.
I opened it and stopped breathing.
“Mom, one hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars was transferred from your savings ten minutes ago.”
Dad backed toward the kitchen.
May you like
Mom looked at the name beside the transfer.
The money had gone into an account belonging only to Brad.
