Chapter 7 - THE SISTER WHO STOOD BESIDE HER
“THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! CAMILLE IS MY DAUGHTER!”
Raphaël's voice exploded through the telephone speaker.
Léa stood in the hospital corridor, staring at Camille, who had turned deathly pale.
Victor immediately raised a hand.
“We need to be careful. Marianne's statement is important, but it is not conclusive. We must verify the birth records and arrange independent genetic testing.”
Raphaël was silent.
Then he said:
“I'm coming to Lyon.”
“No,” Camille replied.
Everyone turned toward her.
She took the phone from Léa.
“Dad, don't come here to explain this away. For once, let us find out something without the family controlling every answer.”
“Camille, sweetheart—”
“Please.”
Her voice broke.
“Just let me find out who I am.”
She ended the call.
For a long moment, neither sister spoke.
Léa looked at Camille's face.
The same gray-blue eyes.
The same narrow chin.
The same small indentation beneath the lower lip.
She had noticed the resemblance at the mansion but dismissed it as a natural similarity between half sisters.
Now she wondered whether they had been looking into a distorted mirror all along.
Camille touched her cheek.
“Do you think it's true?”
Léa shook her head.
“I don't know.”
“What if it is?”
Léa struggled to answer.
For twenty-nine years, she had believed herself to be an only child. She had spent lonely afternoons imagining what it might be like to have a sister.
Someone to share secrets with.
Someone who remembered the same childhood.
Someone who would understand the ache of losing their mother.
And now the woman standing before her might be that sister.
But Camille had grown up calling Catherine Delcourt her mother.
Léa could not imagine what discovering the truth would do to her.
“We'll find out,” she said gently. “And whatever the answer is, you don't have to face it alone.”
Camille began to cry.
Léa hesitated.
Then she embraced her.
Neither knew exactly what the embrace meant.
But both needed it.
Two days later, the preliminary genetic results arrived.
Victor had arranged testing through an accredited independent laboratory, with both women consenting and providing properly documented samples.
He invited them into a private consultation room.
The report lay on the table.
Léa stared at it.
“Just tell us.”
Victor took a breath.
“The laboratory found genetic evidence consistent with you being monozygotic twins.”
Camille covered her mouth.
Léa felt the room tilt.
Twins.
Not half sisters.
Not distant relatives.
Identical twins.
They had shared a womb.
They had been born minutes apart.
And someone had separated them before they were old enough to remember each other.
Camille began shaking.
“But my mother... Catherine told me she gave birth to me.”
Victor nodded.
“We'll need to examine the original records to determine how the identities were changed.”
Léa reached for Camille's hand.
For the first time, the gesture felt natural.
Camille looked at her through tears.
“Does this mean Elise was my mother?”
“Yes,” Léa whispered.
Camille broke down.
She had spent her entire life believing Catherine was the woman who had carried her, given birth to her, and loved her from the first moment of her existence.
Now she was learning that another woman had done those things.
A woman who had died searching for her.
A woman whose face she had seen in a locket without understanding why it mattered.
“I never knew her,” Camille sobbed.
Léa embraced her.
“She was kind.”
Camille cried harder.
“She was brave. And she loved you before she even knew whether you were alive.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she never stopped looking.”
They remained together until Camille could breathe normally.
That evening, Victor received the first batch of archived hospital documents.
The records contained a birth certificate for Léa Martin and a death certificate for Juliette Martin.
But the death certificate had an irregularity.
The physician whose signature appeared on it had retired three months before the twins were born.
Victor contacted the retired doctor's family.
The answer was immediate.
The physician had been living in Canada in April 1997.
He could not have signed the certificate.
Someone had forged it.
A second document revealed that a baby girl had been transferred from Saint-Claire Maternity Clinic to a private residence two days after the twins' birth.
The authorization bore the signature of Catherine Delcourt.
Camille stared at the paper.
“She took me.”
Victor spoke carefully.
“The document strongly suggests she arranged your transfer. We still need to establish who participated and under what circumstances.”
Camille shook her head.
“No. She told me I was hers. Every birthday. Every Christmas. Every time she said she loved me.”
Léa held her hand.
“Whatever she did, none of this was your choice.”
Camille looked at her.
“Why didn't our father know?”
Victor turned another page.
“That is the next question.”
He placed a second photograph on the table.
It showed Catherine leaving Saint-Claire Maternity Clinic on April 19, 1997.
Beside her stood a man carrying a baby in a pink blanket.
Léa recognized the man.
It was Henri Beaumont.
Raphaël's former attorney.
May you like
But what made her blood run cold was the handwritten note beneath the photograph.
“RAPHAËL APPROVED THE TRANSFER.”
