Chapter 18 - MARGARET’S MOTHER LIED TO HER
Emma stared at her mother.
“You had a daughter before me.”
Evelyn cried silently.
“Her name was Sarah.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because I couldn't.”
“You keep saying that.”
“She was eleven months old.”
Emma looked down at Lila.
Almost the same age.
“What happened?”
Evelyn could barely speak.
“I was hiding from Meridian.”
Voss remained several yards away.
“For once, he is telling the truth,” Evelyn said. “Sarah began changing. I panicked. I kept her inland.”
“Like you told us to do.”
“Yes.”
Emma's voice turned cold.
“You repeated the same mistake.”
“I thought Meridian was the greater danger.”
“And she died.”
Evelyn nodded.
“I have lived with that every day for sixty-one years.”
Margaret froze.
“Sixty-one?”
Evelyn looked at her.
“Sarah died in 1965.”
Emma's mother had lost a child twenty-six years before Emma was born.
The age difference became real in a way photographs never managed.
Daniel looked at Voss.
“You knew?”
“Meridian documented the case afterward.”
Emma turned.
“Why should we trust you?”
“You shouldn't.”
Voss's answer surprised everyone.
“You should verify everything.”
Margaret stepped toward the waterproof folder.
Daniel stopped her.
“Could be anything.”
“I'll look.”
Inside were copies of records.
Medical charts.
Photographs.
Names.
No restraints.
No cages.
Some children shown swimming in controlled ocean enclosures.
Others walking on land.
Voss said, “The organization changed leadership in 1998.”
Evelyn scoffed.
“Organizations don't change because they change stationery.”
“No.”
His expression hardened.
“They change when the people responsible go to prison.”
Evelyn looked startled.
Voss continued.
“My father was one of them.”
That explained the hatred in his voice.
“My sister was born with the trait. Meridian took her. My father helped them.”
Emma looked at him.
“You joined them?”
“I dismantled what I could and rebuilt what remained.”
Daniel remained suspicious.
“Then why stalk us?”
Voss's face tightened.
“Because Evelyn would have run if I approached openly.”
“She had reason.”
“Yes.”
A wave touched Lila.
The baby squealed happily.
Her fever was gone.
Margaret looked at her granddaughter.
Then an old memory returned.
Her own mother, Eleanor, refusing to let Margaret swim past the docks as a child.
Margaret had always assumed Eleanor feared drowning.
“Evelyn.”
“Yes?”
“Did you know Eleanor Shaw?”
Evelyn went still.
Margaret's maiden name.
“How do you know that name?” Daniel asked.
Margaret ignored him.
“My mother.”
Evelyn's face confirmed everything.
Margaret felt dizzy.
“You knew her.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“She was related to Clara Vale.”
Margaret staggered backward.
Daniel caught her.
“What?”
Evelyn approached.
“Your mother carried the Holloway-adjacent line too.”
Margaret shook her head.
“No. I married into the Holloways.”
“Yes.”
The implication struck Daniel.
“Both my parents?”
“Your father through Thomas.”
Evelyn looked at Margaret.
“And your mother through Clara's sister.”
Margaret laughed in disbelief.
“My marriage wasn't random either.”
Evelyn didn't answer.
Margaret thought of her husband, Richard Holloway.
A quiet man who loved sailing.
Had his father arranged that marriage?
Had Thomas known?
Voss watched silently.
Margaret looked at Lila.
“So Daniel already carried the trait from two directions.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said.
“And Emma from yours.”
“Yes.”
Three converging lines.
Lila wasn't simply dual-line.
She carried a concentration nobody had anticipated.
Voss stepped closer but stopped when the guards raised their hands.
“This is why her transformation happened so early.”
Daniel stared at his mother.
“You never changed?”
“No.”
Margaret searched her memories.
Then stopped.
At sixteen, she'd fallen from a sailboat.
She had spent perhaps thirty seconds underwater.
When she surfaced, her mother immediately wrapped her legs in a blanket.
Margaret had always believed it was because she was cold.
But she remembered something now.
A silver flash beneath the fabric.
She looked at Evelyn.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“I think it happened to me.”
Daniel whispered, “Mom?”
Margaret stared at the ocean.
“My mother knew.”
Evelyn nodded.
“And she made you forget by convincing you it was nothing.”
Lila slapped the water with her tiny hand.
A small wave rose around her.
Not naturally.
It curled upward like a ribbon.
Everyone saw it.
Voss's face lost its professional calm.
Evelyn whispered, “No child has done that in generations.”
Emma tightened her hold.
“What did she do?”
Evelyn stared at her granddaughter.
“She didn't just respond to the water.”
The wave curled toward Lila's hand.
May you like
“She moved it.”
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