Chapter 2 - What Gareth Told My SisterShe told me Gareth had come to her while I lay unconscious after the delivery. He'd told her both babies were actually alive, but that one needed extended medical care. He claimed I'd said, plainly, that if things went badly enough, Carrie should raise one baby herself, purely so Gareth wouldn't feel overwhelmed managing two at once.
"No," I said immediately. "No, I genuinely never said anything like that."
Carrie nodded through fresh tears. "I didn't believe him at first, either. Then he showed me a signed letter that looked, at a glance, like it came from you directly. He said you trusted me completely. Said he'd explain everything properly, once you'd fully recovered."
I could barely manage breathing properly. "And you simply took him?"
"I took my own nephew," she said, "because I genuinely believed his mother had actually asked me to. Then Gareth kept telling me you were too fragile to see me at all, and later that you blamed me entirely and wanted absolutely nothing to do with either of us anymore."
Years passed steadily after that. Milo grew up. Then he won a place at Jasper's own elementary school, once Carrie moved back into town for work. Gareth told her plainly to choose a different school instead. Carrie refused outright to uproot Milo a second time, for a lie she still didn't fully understand herself.
"I called you for months," I said, staring at her.
"I know you did," she said. "He told me answering would only hurt you further."
She reached into her purse and handed me the letter itself. The signature looked like mine at first glance, but the actual wording didn't match at all. It called her by a formal childhood nickname only Gareth ever used, specifically whenever he wanted to irritate her.
"This is entirely fake," I said, looking up at her.
"I know that now," Carrie said quietly.
Milo, it turned out, had found an old hospital photograph himself, tucked away somewhere. He'd asked why Gareth was pictured holding two babies at once. Gareth told him one was actually a cousin's child, then changed the story entirely, claiming Jasper shared the same father but had a different mother altogether.
Milo had simply accepted that explanation, because children generally accept whatever shape of truth the adults around them happen to hand over. Then he'd started quietly following Jasper around at school, trying to make some connection he genuinely couldn't fully explain to himself yet.
We met that same weekend and gathered together absolutely everything we could each find. I brought medical forms and hospital paperwork. Carrie brought old text messages and the photograph Milo had discovered tucked inside a drawer — Gareth sitting in a hospital chair, holding two newborns wrapped in matching blankets.
That single photograph ended every excuse I had left standing.
Our cousin Marjorie, who worked in accounting, helped us trace the monthly payments Gareth had been quietly sending Carrie, drawn straight from our own joint savings account. Carrie showed me messages where he'd explicitly warned her never to contact me directly.
We spent that entire Saturday building a careful paper trail together. Carrie searched back through her email for old messages from Gareth. I called the hospital myself and requested copies of everything they'd legally release to me. Marjorie checked the dates carefully against our account history and discovered the transfers had started the exact same month I'd come home carrying Jasper.
May you like
Carrie kept staring hard at the papers spread out before us, as though wishing desperately that just one of them might somehow say she hadn't actually spent eight full years living unknowingly inside a fraud.
We decided, together, not to confront him alone. Our parents' anniversary dinner fell on Tuesday, and Gareth fully expected Carrie to stay away entirely, exactly as she had for years running.
