CHAPTER 5 — THE OTHER CHILDREN
Fourteen names changed the room.
Until that moment, Grace had been Rachel’s whole universe. One stolen child. One empty grave. One blue blanket.
Now the screen showed a pattern.
Baby Girl Morgan.
Baby Boy Ellis.
Baby Girl Turner.
Baby Boy Alvarez.
Infants born to poor mothers, young mothers, undocumented mothers, addicted mothers, single mothers, mothers with no lawyers in the hallway.
Some adoptions looked legitimate.
Others had the same signs.
Emergency medical crisis.
Temporary mental health hold.
Voluntary surrender signed during treatment.
Witnessed by Linda Carr.
Reviewed by Dr. Colin Shaw.
Filed through Meredith Shaw’s legal office before she became a judge.
Rachel sat down because her legs stopped trusting her.
Grace looked at the names.
“Am I one of many?”
Rachel heard what she really asked.
Was I special enough to be wanted, or just one stolen baby in a business?
Rachel said, “You are you.”
Grace looked at her.
That was not enough.
Rachel knew it.
But it was all she had that did not belong to a lie.
The investigator photographed every screen. Arthur copied the drive twice. Joanne stood near the wall, crying silently.
“You knew?” Grace asked her.
Joanne shook her head.
“I suspected your case. Not this.”
Rachel looked up.
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
Joanne accepted the question like a punishment she deserved.
“I was afraid. I had two kids. Dr. Shaw said I’d lose my license. Meredith said no court would believe a nurse over a doctor and an attorney.”
Rachel wanted to hate her.
For a moment, she did.
Then she looked at the folder Joanne had kept for seventeen years.
“You should have spoken sooner.”
“Yes,” Joanne said.
Rachel’s voice softened by one degree.
“But you kept proof.”
Joanne cried harder.
Upstairs, the courthouse grew loud with officers and officials. Meredith Shaw had tried to leave with her laptop and a shredded legal pad. Dr. Shaw had been detained at the civic hall after hospital board members turned over old donor-adoption records.
Linda Carr was missing.
That name opened another door in Rachel’s memory.
Linda’s house on Maple Street.
The yellow porch swing.
The locked back bedroom.
The way she always had new baby clothes in boxes though she had no grandchildren.
Rachel stood.
“I know where Linda kept files.”
The investigator looked at her.
“Where?”
Rachel felt suddenly twenty-four again, standing in Linda’s kitchen while the older woman rubbed her back and said, “Sometimes God takes babies because mothers aren’t ready.”
Rachel’s hands shook.
“She had a room she never let anyone enter. She said it was for storage.”
Grace looked at Rachel.
“You went there after I was born?”
“Every week for two months. She told me grief support met there.”
Grace’s face twisted.
“She comforted you after helping them take me?”
Rachel nodded.
The cruelty of that was too large to describe.
The investigator called for a warrant.
Rachel looked at the clock.
It was nearly midnight.
“Linda will run.”
Arthur checked the old index files.
“She owned a storage unit outside town.”
The investigator turned.
“How do you know?”
Arthur held up a scanned invoice.
“Because Meredith paid for it every April 18.”
Rachel stopped breathing.
May you like
Grace noticed the date.
“My birthday.”
