“Rebecca was unstable. She wanted money. I made a deal.”
Richard said bitterly, “With company funds.”
“I protected Mark from the scandal.”
“You stole millions,” Claire said.
“I protected the Mercer name.”
And there it was again.
The name.
Always the same name.
Diane continued.
“Rebecca agreed to stay out of it. The boy was taken care of. Everyone benefited.”
“Except for the boy,” I said.
His gaze fixed on me.
“You’re not her mother.”
“No. Apparently, no one in this room cared enough about acting like a parent.”
Mark flinched.
I turned against him.
“You let your mother hide a child for sixteen years?”
“I was twenty-four years old when she told me it was settled.”
“And at forty-one, you never thought to ask yourself what that meant?”
“I did it.”
“When?”
He hesitated.
Six months.
I knew it even before he answered.
“Six months ago.”
The secrets.
The accounts.
The passwords have been changed.
The messages.
Mark said, “Rebecca got back in touch with Mom. Evan was applying to university. There were money issues.”
“So you’ve started transferring the company’s assets?”
“No.”
He looked at Diane.
“She said we needed to create a family trust.”
Diane retorted sharply: “We did it.”
“For Evan?”
Mark nodded.
“That’s my son.”
The image of Emma’s broken cake briefly flashed before my eyes.
“No son. No party.”
This cruelty was not random.
Diane watched Emma and Lily while knowing there was a boy she considered more precious.
I wanted to be sick.
Rachel spoke cautiously.
“Was Mercer Legacy Holdings supposed to benefit Evan Mason?”
Diane said nothing.
Daniel replied.
“The beneficiary designation we found uses only initials: EM.”
Mark nodded.
“There.”
Daniel looked at him.
“There’s a problem.”
Mark frowned.
“What’s the problem?”
“The legal beneficiary is not Evan Mason.”
Diane’s eyes widened.
For the first time that day, she seemed frightened.
Daniel pushed the document towards Rachel.
She read it.
Then he looked at Richard.
Richard seemed perplexed.
“What?”
Rachel turned the page.
The beneficiary was listed as follows:
ELISABETH MERCER.
Claire whispered, “Who is Elizabeth?”
No one responded.
Richard stood up so abruptly that his chair tipped backwards.
His face looked as if someone had hit him.
“Diane.”
She said nothing.
“Who is Elizabeth?”
“Please sit down.”
“WHO IS ELIZABETH?”
I had never heard him scream.
Diane finally broke down.
“You wanted the truth.”
Richard stared at her.
“No. You spent forty years making sure I never got it.”
Mark looked at each of them in turn.
“What’s going on?”
Diane placed both hands against the table.
Then she laughed.
A faint sound of exhaustion.
“You all worship this ridiculous enterprise as if Richard founded it all by himself.”
Claire whispered, “Mom.”
Diane looked at her daughter.
And something happened between them.
Something that Claire understood before all of us.
Claire’s face turned white.
“No.”
Diane said, “I had a daughter before I met your father.”
Richard stopped breathing.
“What?”
“I was nineteen years old.”
The room disappeared around his words.
“My parents sent me away from home for six months. The baby was adopted.”
Claire started to cry.
Mark murmured, “You never told us?”
“No.”
“For what?”
“Because people like my parents cared about appearances. Because in 1971, unmarried girls didn’t come home with babies. Because I was told to forget about it.”
For the first time, Diane’s voice did not sound powerful.
She looked about nineteen years old.
Then the harshness returned.
“I found her again thirty years later.”
Rachel tapped the document.
“Elizabeth Mercer?”
“She changed her name after we re-established contact.”
Richard stared at his wife.
“So all that money…”
“I was trying to leave him something.”
“By stealing from our company?”
“Your company?” exclaimed Diane. “I spent forty years welcoming your investors, covering up your mistakes, moving house for every new project, raising your children while you worked eighteen hours a day. Don’t tell me I did nothing!”
Richard’s anger has subsided.
For a moment, I almost understood her.
Then I remembered Emma’s face.
Pain can explain cruelty.
That doesn’t excuse him.
Mark asked, “And Evan?”
Diane looked at him.
“Evan was helpful.”
His expression changed.
“What does this mean?”
“I needed you to believe that Legacy Holdings’ sole purpose was to protect a son.”
“You told me that Rebecca’s child was mine.”
“I told you she said he was yours.”
Mark stared at her.
“And?”
Diane looked away.
Daniel slowly took another envelope.
“We found an old paternity report among the documents provided this morning by the Delaware office.”
Mark’s face fell.
“No.”
Diane whispered, “Don’t do it.”
He opened it.
His gaze slid down the page.
Then he stopped.
Evan Mason was not Mark’s son.
He never had been.
PART 5 — THE VALUE OF THE NAME
Mark remained motionless for almost a minute.
Then he started to laugh.
It wasn’t entertainment.
This is what happens when a man discovers that the story he used to justify the destruction of his family was based on a lie.
“You knew it.”
Diane said nothing.
“You knew perfectly well he wasn’t mine.”
“I knew there were doubts.”
Mark slapped the table with his palm.
“This test is fifteen years old!”
Richard stared at her.
“Did you have any proof?”
Diane finally nodded.
“Rebecca told me after the test.”
“And you continued to pay her?”
“I had made promises.”
“With company money,” Claire said.
Diane’s voice became higher-pitched.
“I was protecting everyone.”
“No,” I replied.
She turned towards me.
“You controlled everyone.”
Her eyes narrowed.
I continued.
“You controlled Mark by making him believe he had a secret son. You controlled Rebecca with money. You controlled Richard with silence. You controlled Claire with approval. You controlled me by making me believe I would never be Mercer enough.”
Diane opened her mouth.
I didn’t let her speak.
“And when Emma became the center of attention for an afternoon, you couldn’t stand it.”
“That has nothing to do with that.”
“Everything is connected to that.”
I thought about the cake.
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