I gripped the phone so tightly my fingers hurt.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Then why was I told she died?”
The supervisor hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
“Please check everything.”
“I will.”
A few minutes later, she came back.
“There is a handwritten authorization attached to the file.”
“Whose signature?”
She paused.
“Your husband’s.”
My stomach dropped.
“Send me a copy.”
“I can’t release it over the phone.”
“Then I’ll come there.”
That evening, Toby and I drove to the hospital.
I was still weak, but something inside me had changed.
I wasn’t walking into that building as a grieving mother anymore.
I was walking in as a mother searching for her child.
The supervisor met me privately.
She placed a folder on the table.
Inside was a single document.
My husband had authorized the transfer of a newborn girl to another facility.
The date was the same day I gave birth.
The receiving institution was a private neonatal center almost two hours away.
My hands started trembling.
“Why would my husband do this?”
The supervisor looked uncomfortable.
“I can’t speculate.”
Then she pointed to the bottom of the page.
“There is also a second signature.”
I looked down.
Brenda Miller.
My mother-in-law.
Toby suddenly grabbed my hand.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“I remember something else.”
I turned toward him.
“That night, Daddy told Grandma, ‘She’ll never know.’”
My blood ran cold.
“What else?”
Toby’s eyes filled with tears.
“He said, ‘Once the adoption papers are finished, everything will be okay.’”
Adoption.
The word echoed through my head.
Someone had taken my daughter.
And they had planned for me to believe she was dead.
The next morning, my attorney contacted the private neonatal center.
They refused to provide information.
So he obtained an emergency court order.
That afternoon, we received the records.
A female infant had been admitted under a temporary identification number.
She had been born on the exact date and at the exact hospital where I had delivered.
She had the same blood type.
And she had one distinctive identifying feature noted in the medical records.
A small birthmark beneath her left shoulder.
I remembered seeing it.
For less than a minute.
Before the doctors rushed her away.
“She’s alive,” I whispered.
My attorney looked at me.
“We need to be careful. We don’t know yet where she is.”
Then his phone rang.
He listened.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He ended the call and looked directly at me.
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