Chapter 3 - The Secret History
Sophie turned around, her eyes widening when she saw me standing at the curtain line. She leapt off the bed, her new sneakers squeaking against the hospital floor, and skidded to a halt in front of me.
"Mister!" she chirped, clutching her backpack straps. "You came to see my mommy? Did you come to get your forty-five dollars?"
"No, Sophie," I said gently, kneeling down so I was at her eye level, fighting the sudden constriction in my throat. "I just wanted to make sure your new shoes were working properly. And I wanted to meet your mom."
"Sophie, sweetie," Anna called out, her voice straining against her oxygen mask. "Can you go down to the nurse's station and ask Ms. Gable for the coloring book she promised you? Mommy needs to speak to this nice man for just a moment."
"Okay!" Sophie didn't hesitate. She loved her new shoes too much to walk slowly; she practically bounced out of the ward, her pink trim flashing in the dim hallway light.
Once the sound of her footsteps faded, I stepped closer to the bed, pulling an uncomfortable plastic chair up to the mattress. I held up my phone, showing the digital birth certificate. "How?" I asked softly. "How did my father hide this? Why didn't he ever tell me?"
Anna let out a long, ragged sigh, adjusting her oxygen lines. "Your father didn't hide me, Michael. My mother did. Her name was Evelyn Whitmore. She was his executive assistant forty years ago, before your father married your mother. It was a brief, secret affair. When my mother got pregnant, she refused to let Richard buy her silence. She left the company, changed her number, and raised me completely alone on a secretary's salary."
She paused, taking a shallow breath. "I didn't even know who my father was until my mother passed away three years ago and left me her old diaries. I found his name, his signature, and his company logo. I saw your face on the news, Michael. The great Michael Harrison, billionaire bachelor, restructuring the city. I never wanted to interfere with your life. We were doing fine."
"Then what happened?" I asked, looking at the oncology monitors tracking her fading vitals.
"Advanced small-cell lung carcinoma," Anna whispered, a tear escaping the corner of her eye and tracking through the dust on her cheek. "Non-smoker, just terrible genetic luck. The medical bills swallowed our savings in six months. We lost our apartment last month. We’ve been staying at a transitional family shelter downtown. Sophie... Sophie has been going to school with shoes that were literally falling apart. She was so ashamed to come into the hospital looking poor. She thought the doctors wouldn't take care of me if we looked like garbage."
I buried my face in my hands. I had hundreds of millions of dollars sitting in offshore accounts, earning interest I would never live to spend, while my own sister and niece were sleeping in a homeless shelter and begging for forty-five-dollar shoes on the street corner.
"Why didn't you contact me sooner?" I groaned, looking up at her. "I could have paid for the best oncologists in Europe! I could have moved you into a private clinic!"
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"Because I have pride, Michael," Anna said, her eyes flashing with a sudden, fierce intensity that reminded me instantly of my father. "I didn't want a handout from a brother who didn't know I existed. But yesterday, the doctor told me the truth. The tumors have metastasized to my liver. I have less than a month left."
She reached out, her cold, thin fingers grabbing my wrist with surprising strength. "I don't care about myself, Michael. But Sophie... Sophie has no one. No father, no grandparents, no aunts. If I die, she goes into the Illinois foster care system. I saw your face out the window today—you were walking past the shoe store. I told Sophie this morning to look for a man who looked like the photo in the newspaper. I told her to ask him for help. I wanted to see if you had a heart, Michael. I wanted to see if the Harrison blood had any mercy left in it."
