Chapter 4 - The Threat from Boston
The drive back to our home in the countryside was quiet and peaceful.
Lily, Clara, and Violet fell fast asleep in their rear car seats within ten minutes, clutching their plush stuffed bunnies, exhausted from the excitement of the airport.
Samuel drove our silver SUV through the winding roads lined with tall oak trees, his right hand resting comfortably over mine on the center console.
"Are you okay, Em?" Samuel asked softly, glancing over at me with genuine concern.
"I’m better than okay," I answered, leaning my head against the headrest. "Seeing him today... it felt like closing a book I had left open for five years. He has no power over us anymore, Sam."
"He looked panicked," Samuel noted. "A man like Nathaniel Whitcomb isn't used to losing control. Especially when it involves three potential heirs to a billion-dollar trust."
"He doesn't care about the girls as human beings," I said bitterly. "He cares about what his mother, Eleanor Whitcomb, will say when she finds out."
My prediction proved true faster than I anticipated.
By ten o'clock that evening, after the girls were tucked safely into their beds in their sunlit pink-and-white bedroom, the telephone in my private home office rang.
I picked up the receiver.
"Emily."
The voice on the other end was like ice sliding over stone. Eleanor Whitcomb.
"Hello, Eleanor," I said, leaning back in my leather chair, keeping my breathing steady.
"Nathaniel called me from his hotel room in Charlotte an hour ago," Eleanor said, her tone dripping with quiet, aristocratic fury. "He tells me you have three four-year-old girls. Triplets."
"I do."
"And he claims they bear an undeniable physical resemblance to the Whitcomb family line."
"They are my daughters, Eleanor. And they have nothing to do with you or your family."
A harsh, condescending laugh came through the line. "Don't be ridiculous, Emily. If those children carry Whitcomb blood, they belong to the Whitcomb legacy. My son has a right to his heirs. I will not have three legitimate Whitcomb children raised in some southern backwater by a middle-class doctor!"
"They are not your heirs, Eleanor," I said firmly. "You made sure of that five years ago when you drafted that divorce settlement stripping me of any family affiliation. You called me barren, you called me useless, and you threw me out on the street."
"We will court-order a paternity test by Monday morning," Eleanor declared, her voice rising in cold authority. "Our family attorneys in New York and Boston are already drafting the petition for joint custody and visitation rights. You don't have the financial resources to fight the Whitcomb legal team, Emily. You know that."
"You really haven't kept up with my life over the last five years, have you, Eleanor?" I asked softly.
A pause on the line. "What is that supposed to mean?"
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"Call your lead corporate counsel, Arthur Sterling," I suggested warmly. "Ask him who bought out the master patent rights for the Whitcomb Medical Diagnostic system three months ago. Goodnight, Eleanor."
I hung up the phone before she could speak another word.
