Chapter 5 - What Lies Under the Mattress
I dragged myself backward out of the wall like an injured animal, coughing up thick, bitter bile onto the bedroom rug.
"Daddy?"
Lily was standing over me, clutching a box of tissues. Her tiny hands were shaking, but she was trying to wipe the stinging chemical residue from my face.
"Lily... go get a wet towel," I wheezed, my eyes burning like hot coals. "Hurry, baby."
She sprinted to the bathroom and came back with a soaking washcloth. I pressed it hard against my eyes and mouth, flushing the stinging pepper-antiseptic compound from my skin. My vision came back in blurry, watery bursts of gray and red.
Caroline was gone. The silence in the house was suffocating.
I picked up the crowbar, scooped Lily up in my left arm, and walked into the master bedroom. The room Caroline and I had shared for five years. The king-sized bed with the Egyptian cotton sheets. The framed photos of our wedding in Vermont on the nightstands. Everything was a lie. A meticulously constructed stage set designed to keep me blind.
Check the floor safe under our mattress, she had said.
I threw Lily gently onto the armchair. "Stay there, munchkin. Don't move."
I gripped the edge of the mattress and flipped it entirely off the box spring. Beneath it, in the center of the wooden slats, was a rectangular cut-out in the subfloor. Inside sat a heavy black digital safe.
The keypad blinked with a red LED light. Six digits.
I tried Caroline’s birthday. Error. I tried Lily’s birthday. Error. I tried our wedding anniversary. Error.
Two attempts left before the system locked down.
I stared at the blinking red light. My heart hammered against my ribs. Think, Ryan. What does this psycho care about?
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the ruined Polaroid the little girl had given me. On the back, in faint, faded ballpoint ink, was a date: 10-24-16. The night Maya and I got engaged.
I punched in: 1 - 0 - 2 - 4 - 1 - 6.
A sharp beep. The motorized bolt retracted with a mechanical whine.
I pulled the heavy lid open.
Inside lay three thick manila folders, two burner flip phones, stacks of bound hundred-dollar bills totaling at least fifty thousand dollars, and two blue velvet ring boxes.
I pulled out the first folder. Across the tab was a label printed with a label maker: SUBJECT A: MAYA LINDSAY.
My hands shook so hard I nearly dropped the folder. I opened it.
Medical charts. Hundreds of pages of clinical notes detailing high-dose sedative regimens, neurological monitoring, and induced amnesia protocols. Stamped at the top of every page was the logo of a private pharmaceutical research firm out of Rochester: Aegis Neurological Solutions.
Attached to the first medical chart was a birth certificate.
Name: Clara Lindsay-Vance. Date of Birth: September 14, 2021. Mother: Maya Lindsay. Father: Ryan Vance.
I leaned against the bedframe, the breath ripped from my lungs. Clara. The little girl in the wall was my daughter. Not metaphorically. Not an hallucination. She was my biological child with Maya, born five years after Maya was declared dead.
I opened the second folder. The tab read: SUBJECT B: RYAN VANCE.
Inside was a complete surveillance log of my life.
Photos of me at the gym. Photos of me at my engineering job. Photos of me drinking coffee in the diner where I "accidentally" bumped into Caroline seven years ago. The entire meet-cute that led to our marriage—her spilling hot tea on my lap, our first date, her comforting me while I cried over Maya’s death—was an operation.
Every single milestone of my adult life had been staged, scripted, and managed.
Then I opened the third folder.
SUBJECT C: LILY VANCE.
There was no birth certificate. Just an adoption intake form from an unlicensed surrogate clinic in Mexico, followed by a DNA comparison sheet.
Maternal match: Caroline Vance (0.0%). Paternal match: Ryan Vance (0.0%).
Lily wasn't mine. She wasn't Caroline’s.
May you like
I looked across the room at the little four-year-old girl sitting quietly on the armchair, clutching her stuffed bunny. She tilted her head, watching me with those wide, unblinking hazel eyes.
"Daddy?" Lily whispered. "Did you find the papers that say I'm not real?"
