PART 2 — WHAT THE POLICE FOUND INSIDE THE SHED
The sound of the police sirens grew louder through the storm.
My mother stood frozen in the backyard.
I stayed beside the shed door, listening.
“Claire?”
Nothing.
Then I heard it again.
A faint whimper.
“She’s still alive,” I shouted.
Two officers rushed through the gate, followed by a paramedic.
One of them looked at the padlock.
“Who put this here?”
My mother immediately pointed at me.
“This is all a misunderstanding! My daughter-in-law is unstable. She locked herself in there to punish us.”
The officer looked at her.
“Then why is the door locked from the outside?”
My mother didn’t answer.
The officer pulled out his radio.
“Cut the lock.”
A few seconds later, the padlock snapped.
The door swung open.
The smell that came out of that shed made me step backward.
It was damp, cold, and stale.
Then I saw her.
Claire was lying on a thin blanket on the floor.
Her face was pale.
Her lips were dry.
Her hands were trembling.
She was still wearing the maternity dress she had on the day I left.
“Derek…”
I dropped to my knees beside her.
“Oh my God, Claire.”
She tried to sit up, but the paramedic stopped her.
“Don’t move yet.”
I looked at her.
“How long have you been in here?”
Claire’s eyes filled with tears.
“Three days.”
I felt something inside me break.
“Why didn’t you scream?”
“I did.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“But your mother told me nobody would hear me over the storm.”
I looked toward Marlene.
She had gone completely silent.
The paramedics carefully lifted Claire onto a stretcher.
Then one of the officers stepped inside the shed.
He began looking around.
At first, I thought he was searching for evidence of how Claire had been locked inside.
Then he stopped.
“Derek?”
I walked toward him.
He was pointing at a wooden cabinet in the corner.
“What is this?”
I opened the cabinet.
Inside were several unopened bottles of water.
Canned food.
Blankets.
A flashlight.
And a small medical kit.
My stomach dropped.
“She had supplies in here,” I said.
The officer looked at me.
“Someone prepared this place.”
Claire suddenly began crying.
“I didn’t put those there.”
The officer examined the items.
“They weren’t meant for you to survive three days.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
He pointed toward the far wall.
There were scratches in the wood.
Dozens of them.
Some were old.
Some were fresh.
Then the paramedic called out.
“Officer, you need to see this.”
She had found something beneath Claire’s blanket.
A small plastic bag.
Inside was Claire’s prenatal care card.
But underneath it was another document.
An ultrasound report.
I looked at the date.
My hands began shaking.
It wasn’t Claire’s.
It belonged to another woman.
A woman who had apparently been pregnant while living in this house years earlier.
I turned toward my mother.
Her face had gone completely white.
“Marlene…”
She wouldn’t look at me.
The officer picked up another paper from the floor.
It was an old hospital discharge form.
And the name printed across the top stopped me cold.
Trevor Rowan.
My younger brother.
I looked at the officer.
“What does my brother have to do with this?”
Before he could answer, Claire grabbed my hand.
“Derek…”
I leaned closer.
She whispered something that made my entire body go cold.
“Your mother wasn’t teaching me a lesson.”
I stared at her.
“She was trying to make me lose our baby.”
The room went silent.
Then Claire pointed weakly toward the back wall.
“She told me if I didn’t sign something, she would make sure you never found me.”
The officer immediately asked:
“What did she want you to sign?”
Claire looked at me.
“A document saying you were the father of the baby…”
She paused.
“And Trevor was the father of the child I lost years ago.”
I couldn’t breathe.
I turned toward the police officer.
“What is she talking about?”
The officer looked at the documents again.
Then he made a call.
A few moments later, he came back with an expression I will never forget.
“Mr. Rowan, we need you to sit down.”
“Why?”
He held up the old medical record.
“Because this isn’t the first time your mother has been accused of doing something like this.”
Then he revealed that the police had discovered an old case file connected to my family.
A case involving a missing woman.
A pregnancy.
And a baby that was supposedly never born.
And the name at the center of that investigation…
was my mother.
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