Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Never Existed
Michael slept badly.
At three seventeen in the morning, he gave up pretending.
He went downstairs, poured coffee he did not want, and placed the hospital discharge sheet on the kitchen table.
SUSAN ELAINE CARTER.
He had spent fifteen years as an attorney learning that documents rarely lied in interesting ways. People lied. Documents usually contained the boring residue of those lies: incorrect dates, altered addresses, inconsistent signatures, a middle initial that appeared in one place but vanished in another.
He began with the obvious.
Patricia Carter, his mother, had always said she was an only child.
Her parents, Frank and Helen Mercer, had both died before Michael graduated law school. Michael remembered them clearly. Frank collected pocketknives. Helen smelled like rosewater and kept lemon drops in her purse.
No mention of Susan.
Not once.
At seven, Lily came downstairs wearing pajamas covered in tiny foxes.
She sat beside him.
“You're doing your lawyer face.”
“What lawyer face?”
“The one where your mouth looks mad but your eyes look sleepy.”
Michael closed the laptop.
“Thanks.”
“You're welcome.”
She spotted the paper.
“That's Grandma's.”
“I know.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“No.”
It was not entirely true.
He was angry.
But mostly he was afraid.
Children assumed adults kept secrets because adults knew more.
Adults knew better.
Michael knew secrets usually survived because somebody had decided truth would cost too much.
“Tell me what happened at the hospital,” he said.
Lily brightened, happy to have a question she could answer.
“Grandma got mad because they kept saying Susan.”
“Who said it?”
“The lady with purple glasses.”
“At registration?”
“I don't know.”
“Was she behind a desk?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Lily swung her legs beneath the chair.
“She said, ‘Susan Mercer?’ and Grandma went over.”
Michael's chest tightened.
Mercer.
His mother's maiden name.
“What happened then?”
“They gave her a bracelet. Grandma said they had the wrong name, and the lady said…” Lily squinted, trying to remember. “She said, ‘This is what's in the system.’”
“Anything else?”
“Grandma got really quiet.”
Michael waited.
“And?”
“There was a yellow paper.”
“What yellow paper?”
“In her bag.”
“What did it say?”
“I don't know all the words.”
“Anything you remember?”
Lily thought.
“Something about identity.”
Michael stared at her.
“Identity?”
“Yeah. And Grandma took it away because she said grown-up papers are private.”
That was enough.
He dropped Lily at her mother's house after breakfast.
By ten, he was in his office.
Michael practiced family and civil law, not criminal law, but he knew enough about public records to start pulling threads.
Patricia Elaine Mercer Carter had a driver's license.
A Social Security record.
A marriage certificate.
Tax filings.
A long employment history as a bookkeeper.
Nothing obviously suspicious.
Susan Elaine Mercer, however, was strange.
He found a birth index first.
Twin girls.
Born April 14, 1960.
Franklin County, Ohio.
Patricia Anne Mercer.
Susan Elaine Mercer.
Michael leaned back.
Twins.
His mother had not merely hidden a sister.
She had hidden a twin.
He searched marriage records.
Nothing for Susan.
Property records.
Nothing.
Voter registrations.
Thin.
Then one record from 1981 surfaced in an old archived court index.
STATE OF OHIO v. SUSAN E. MERCER.
Michael felt his pulse increase.
The case was too old to view online.
He requested the docket.
While waiting, he searched newspapers.
The Columbus Dispatch archive produced a small article from June 1981.
YOUNG WOMAN QUESTIONED AFTER FATAL CRASH.
Michael opened it.
A twenty-one-year-old woman had been questioned following a late-night collision on a rural road outside Delaware County.
One passenger died.
The driver fled before police arrived.
Another woman, Susan Mercer of Columbus, later came forward.
Michael read the article twice.
Susan Mercer.
Twenty-one.
Same age as Patricia would have been.
He kept searching.
Two days later:
MERCER WOMAN CHARGED IN HIT-AND-RUN CASE.
Michael stopped breathing for a second.
The article described Susan Elaine Mercer accepting responsibility for leaving the scene of an accident.
No photograph.
Then there was nothing.
No follow-up article.
No sentencing report.
No later mention.
Michael called his mother.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“You went looking,” she said.
Not hello.
Not good morning.
“You knew I would.”
“Yes.”
“I found a court case.”
Silence.
“1981.”
More silence.
“Were you involved?”
“Michael.”
“Someone died.”
“I know.”
“Was Susan driving?”
Patricia hung up.
Twenty minutes later, someone knocked on his office door.
His assistant looked inside.
“Your mother is here.”
Patricia entered wearing a navy coat and carrying an old leather handbag.
She shut the door.
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“No,” she said. “You want a truth you can file somewhere.”
Michael stood.
“Someone died, Mom.”
“And you think I forgot?”
“You've lied to me my entire life.”
“I protected you.”
“From what?”
She placed the handbag on his desk.
“From asking the same questions you're asking now.”
“That isn't protection.”
“Sometimes it is.”
Michael laughed once without humor.
“You don't get to decide that.”
Patricia looked toward the windows.
“You're right.”
He did not expect that.
She reached into her bag.
Michael thought she might pull out documents.
Instead, she removed a photograph.
Old.
Faded.
Two teenage girls stood beside a swimming pool.
Identical faces.
Same dark hair.
Same narrow smile.
One wore a white sundress.
The other denim shorts and a red T-shirt.
Michael knew immediately which was his mother.
Or thought he did.
Patricia tapped the girl in the white dress.
“Which one is me?”
Michael hesitated.
“That one.”
“No.”
She touched the other.
“This is me.”
Then she touched the girl in white.
“This is Susan.”
Michael studied them.
“You were identical.”
“Almost.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She hasn't spoken to me in eleven years.”
“What happened in 1981?”
Patricia picked up the photograph.
“I told you to leave this alone.”
“And I told you I can't.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Then understand something before you destroy whatever is left.”
“What?”
Patricia looked directly at him.
“The woman charged in that crash wasn't Susan.”
Michael went still.
Patricia swallowed.
May you like
“It was me.”
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