Chapter 9 - the year Hannah could not remember
Hannah’s childhood medical records contained a gap.
Age eight to nine.
Margaret said Hannah had been healthy.
No hospitalizations.
No major illnesses.
But Theodore’s letters referenced something called:
H-04 pediatric observation.
Hannah stared at her mother over video.
“Mom.”
Margaret looked away.
“Tell me.”
“You were tested once.”
Hannah’s anger rose.
“You said I wasn’t.”
“I said Northbridge didn’t test you.”
“Who did?”
“Your grandfather.”
Theodore had taken Hannah to a private clinic after becoming suspicious of Walter Sloan’s claims.
Independent tests showed Hannah lacked the marker.
Walter refused to accept the result.
A second set of tests was ordered.
Margaret stopped them.
“Was Rebecca there?”
“She would have been a teenager.”
“Walter?”
“Yes.”
“Adrian Keller?”
“Yes.”
Hannah felt a faint memory stir.
A white room.
A hummingbird sticker.
A man saying:
“Hold still.”
Nothing more.
Margaret whispered:
“You hated doctors for a year afterward.”
Hannah had always believed that fear came from an ordinary childhood injection.
Perhaps not.
Price found Theodore’s private journal.
Walter Sloan had accused Margaret of contaminating Hannah’s sample.
Keller initially sided with Walter.
Later, Keller changed his opinion.
One entry:
Keller admits Sloan substituted sample.
Hannah stared.
This pattern began with her.
Long before Sophie.
Walter Sloan had allegedly swapped Hannah’s childhood sample to preserve his hereditary theory.
Adrian Keller discovered it.
That may explain why Keller later died.
Or why his identity became useful.
Price said carefully:
“We still don’t know whether Keller’s death was truly accidental.”
The plane crash had been investigated.
Bad weather.
Mechanical failure.
Case closed.
But one passenger’s body had not been individually identified due to fire.
Adrian Keller.
Hannah felt cold.
“Could he be alive?”
“Possibly.”
Then a new message arrived on Hannah’s phone.
Unknown number.
STOP DIGGING INTO YOUR GRANDFATHER.
She showed Price immediately.
A second message followed.
SOPHIE IS SAFE NOW. KEEP HER THAT WAY.
Hannah’s skin went cold.
“Is that a threat?”
Price replied:
“Yes.”
Police increased protection around Hannah and Sophie.
Mark was moved as well after admitting he had received a similar message months earlier.
He had deleted it.
Hannah confronted him.
“You were threatened?”
Mark nodded.
“And you still kept doing the sessions?”
“I thought stopping would make it worse.”
“For Sophie?”
“Yes.”
“Or for you?”
Mark looked down.
Sloan knew about his debt.
His affair.
Hannah froze.
“What affair?”
Mark’s face collapsed.
Two years earlier.
Brief.
Ended.
Hannah felt the marriage break in a completely different direction.
Sloan had gathered leverage on him.
Financial secrets.
Infidelity.
Everything he feared Hannah learning.
She threatened exposure if he stopped cooperating.
Hannah stood.
“You let our daughter pay the price for your secrets.”
Mark cried.
“I know.”
“Do not ask me to understand.”
“I’m not.”
For the first time, Mark stopped defending himself.
That mattered.
But not enough.
Price traced the threatening messages.
Impossible to identify directly.
Yet the sender used a network connected to a hotel near Dulles Airport.
Security video showed an elderly man entering a rented office suite.
Facial comparison produced a likely match.
Walter Sloan.
Alive.
Price placed the image in front of Hannah.
Seventy-eight.
Thinner.
But unmistakable.
A legally dead man had been running the operation.
Rebecca Sloan was nowhere in sight.
Then another camera captured someone leaving the same suite thirty minutes later.
Hannah stared.
“Is that Keller?”
Price nodded slowly.
Adrian Keller.
Also officially dead.
Both men were alive.
Both had watched the Hale family for decades.
But the greatest shock came from Keller’s companion.
A woman in her seventies.
Margaret Hale.
May you like
Hannah’s mother.
👉 Security footage showed Hannah’s mother meeting secretly with the two men whose supposedly dead identities were behind Sophie’s illegal testing.
