Where had Dana gotten him?
Weeks later, Ethan and I visited Marcus at Cook County Jail. He came in wearing an orange jumpsuit, thinner but still arrogant.
Ethan slid the death certificate and fake DNA note against the glass.
“Read it.”
Marcus read the papers. His face twisted in horror.
“No,” he whispered. “Fake. This is fake.”
“Your son died after birth,” Ethan said. “You destroyed your wife, your family, and your freedom for a lie.”
Marcus began laughing, then screaming, then smashing his forehead against the table until guards dragged him away.
After that, Ethan searched for the truth.
An old record led us to a crumbling apartment on the South Side. Dana’s elderly mother lived there, sick and trembling beneath a worn blanket.
When Ethan told her who he was, she cried.
“Open the tin in that crate,” she whispered.
Inside was a small walnut bracelet on a faded red cord. Engraved on it were the numbers 12181130.
“That night,” she said, “Dana’s baby died. She was terrified Marcus would leave her. She disappeared into the snow and came back with you under her coat. You were wearing that bracelet. She said she found you outside an orphanage.”
The numbers were Ethan’s birth date and time: December 18, 11:30 PM.
We went public with an investigative TV program, but kept the bracelet numbers secret. Three days later, an elderly couple appeared, claiming they were Ethan’s birth parents and reciting the numbers perfectly.
But something felt wrong.
Their clothes were ragged, yet their hands looked too carefully kept. When I demanded an immediate DNA test, they panicked.
Ethan cornered them.
“Who hired you?”
The man collapsed. “We’re actors. A woman paid us to say it.”
Dana.
Even now, she wanted to poison Ethan’s heart.
A month later, the hospital called. Dana was dying and wanted to speak.
We found her pale, thin, and spiteful in a hospital bed.
“I hired those actors,” she rasped, smiling. “I wanted Ethan to believe he was unwanted trash.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I lived in fear,” Dana said. “I never found him at an orphanage. I stole him from Northwestern Memorial Hospital.”
Ethan gripped the bed rail.
Dana continued, her voice fading. “There was chaos in the VIP maternity suite. The mother was hemorrhaging. Doctors were trying to save her. You were in a bassinet, crying, wearing that wooden bracelet. I hid you under my coat and walked out.”
Ethan stepped back, horrified. “You stole me from my dying mother?”
Dana laughed weakly. “You were never abandoned. You were stolen from a rich family. And you’ll never find them.”
The monitor flatlined soon after.
But we did not stop.
With Robert’s help, we searched old police files. One rainy night, he burst through our door with a folder.
“I found them,” he said. “Your family.”
The file showed that on December 18, Grace, daughter-in-law of former state senator and business magnate Charles Whitmore, had been rushed into Northwestern Memorial’s VIP maternity suite. Her husband, Thomas, had died in a car accident one week earlier. The shock sent her into early labor.
Thomas had carved a walnut bracelet for the baby before he died. During labor, Charles carved the birth date and time into it: 12181130. In the chaos of Grace’s fatal hemorrhage, Dana slipped in and stole the child.
For twenty-five years, the Whitmore family had searched for him.
