Chapter 2 - St. Agnes
The power came back forty-seven seconds later.
I know because I counted every one of them.
One hand stayed on Owen’s chest. The other held the burner phone. My mother stood near the living room doorway without moving, her face pale in the emergency glow from the kitchen stove clock.
When the lights snapped on again, nothing in the room had changed.
That frightened me more than if a window had shattered.
There had been no storm surge. No blown transformer. The houses across the street still had power. My television clock had not reset. Only our house had gone dark.
Someone had done it deliberately.
“St. Agnes,” I said.
Lenora looked older with every second.
“What happened there?”
She stared at the burner phone.
“Turn it off.”
“No.”
“They can hear through it.”
“Then let them hear.”
“Daniel.”
“Let them hear you tell me why somebody has been tracking my newborn son.”
She closed her eyes.
I had seen that expression once before—at Claire’s funeral, when the minister asked everyone to bow their heads and my mother did not. She had simply stared at the casket, as if she were refusing to give death even the courtesy of looking away.
Now she walked to the kitchen table and sat down.
“St. Agnes was not a hospital,” she said.
“What was it?”
“A maternity home.”
“For unmarried women?”
“Some. Girls with nowhere else to go. Women whose families wanted a pregnancy kept quiet. Women whose husbands had money and reputations. Women who were told adoption was the only respectable choice.”
I looked at Owen.
“Why would that have anything to do with me?”
“Because you were born there.”
I actually laughed.
I had been born at Memorial General. I knew that because I had seen the certificate a hundred times. Claire had teased me about the middle name my father chose because a Red Sox game was playing in the waiting room. My birth had never been mysterious.
“My birth certificate says Memorial.”
“I know.”
“So you’re lying now or you lied then.”
“Yes.”
The answer was so simple that it silenced me.
My mother folded her hands.
“I was twenty-seven when I had you. St. Agnes had officially closed two years earlier, but the rear wing remained open under another name. The public side had been converted into offices. The maternity rooms still operated for private clients.”
“Private clients.”
“People with enough money to make records disappear.”
I felt my jaw tighten.
“Who ran it?”
She did not answer immediately.
I knew before she said the name that I was going to hate it.
“Dr. Julian Kane.”
The name meant nothing at first.
Then it did.
Julian Kane was not some forgotten criminal hiding in another country. He was famous. He had a wing named after him at Massachusetts Children’s. He appeared on television during charity drives. He had founded the Kane Maternal Health Foundation after retiring from obstetrics. Claire had donated to one of their programs after Owen’s baby shower.
“No,” I said.
My mother’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
“He delivered me?”
“He signed paperwork connected to your birth.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I don’t know who physically delivered you.”
I pushed away from the table and paced toward the window, then remembered the tracker and stopped before reaching it.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“And you waited thirty-four years to mention it.”
“I spent thirty-four years hoping I would never have to.”
“That is not an excuse.”
“No.”
I turned back.
“What did they do there?”
My mother’s gaze dropped.
“They changed children’s identities.”
The sentence had no shape in my mind.
“What does that mean?”
“Sometimes a mother was told her baby had died when the baby had not. Sometimes one family paid for a private adoption that was never legal. Sometimes newborns were placed under names that did not belong to them. Sometimes records were rewritten so thoroughly that by the time anyone asked questions, there was nothing left to prove the truth.”
My stomach rolled.
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you one of them?”
“No.”
“Was I?”
She looked at me.
That was my answer.
I felt the floor leave me.
Owen began to fuss softly in the bassinet, and the sound kept me from falling apart. I went to him, lifted him, and held him close.
“My father,” I said. “Thomas Mercer.”
“He was your father.”
“Biologically?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re my mother.”
“Yes.”
“Then what identity was changed?”
She took a breath.
“Yours was changed before it was changed back.”
I stared.
“For nine hours after you were born, you were listed under another woman’s name.”
“Why?”
“I never found out.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It should have been.”
She reached for her purse on the chair beside her. I flinched before I could stop myself.
She noticed and froze.
“I’m taking out a piece of paper.”
“Slowly.”
Pain crossed her face, but she obeyed.
From a zipped pocket, she removed a folded photocopy. The paper had been opened so many times the creases were nearly worn through.
She slid it across the table.
It was a hospital ledger page.
Old. Grainy. Typed names in narrow columns.
At the top: ST. AGNES RESIDENT MATERNITY ANNEX.
I scanned the dates.
Then I found mine.
MERCER, LENORA — MALE — 7 LBS 4 OZ — 03:12 A.M.
Beside it, handwritten in red pencil, was a code.
B-17.
Three lines lower was another entry.
MADDEN, ELISE — MALE — 7 LBS 5 OZ — 03:09 A.M.
Code B-16.
Both entries had arrows drawn between them.
“What are the arrows?”
“I don’t know.”
“What does B-17 mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know enough to have hidden this for three decades.”
She looked at the paper rather than me.
“Your father stole that page in 1998.”
The room tightened around me again.
“Dad knew?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“More than I did at first.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because eight days after he found that ledger, his brakes failed on Route 1.”
I stopped breathing.
My father had died when I was six.
A car accident.
Wet road.
Mechanical failure.
That was the story I had carried my entire life.
“You told me he hydroplaned.”
“I told you what the police report said.”
“You just said his brakes failed.”
“They did.”
“Was it an accident?”
My mother looked at me.
“I stopped believing that a long time ago.”
I sat down because my legs would no longer hold me.
Owen slept against my chest now, unaware that three generations of his family had just shifted beneath him.
The burner phone buzzed again.
A new message.
ASK HER ABOUT ELISE MADDEN.
I turned the screen toward my mother.
Her face drained of color.
“Who is Elise?”
“No one you need to find.”
“That answer guarantees I’m finding her.”
“She is dead.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you friends?”
My mother’s eyes filled.
“We were roommates at St. Agnes for eleven days.”
“She gave birth three minutes before you.”
“Yes.”
“To a boy almost the exact same weight as me.”
“Yes.”
“And our ledger entries were linked.”
“Yes.”
“Was her son switched with me?”
My mother covered her mouth.
I felt sick.
“Was I taken from you?”
“For nine hours.”
“And then?”
“You came back.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“What happened to Elise’s baby?”
Her voice became almost inaudible.
“He disappeared.”
The burner phone buzzed a third time.
A photo loaded.
Not old.
Taken recently.
It showed a man standing outside a grocery store, maybe late thirties, broad shoulders, dark hair, profile turned away from the camera.
Under the image was one sentence.
ELISE’S SON DIDN’T DISAPPEAR.
Then another.
HE FOUND YOU FIRST.
I enlarged the photograph.
Something about the man’s face pulled at me even though I could barely see it.
The nose.
The jaw.
A small scar near the left eyebrow.
My mother stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“No.”
“You know him?”
“No.”
“You reacted.”
“Daniel, listen to me. Whoever has that phone wants you to go looking. That means you cannot.”
I stared at the photo again.
A grocery store sign was visible behind him.
Halley Market.
There was only one within thirty miles.
It was twenty minutes away.
I handed Owen to my mother before I could think better of it.
She looked shocked.
“If anything happens to him—”
“Nothing will happen.”
“That is what everybody says before something happens.”
I pulled on my jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Elise Madden’s son.”
She stepped in front of the door.
“Daniel, please.”
I looked at her.
“You spent thirty-four years deciding what I was allowed to know.”
“That was to protect you.”
“No. It was to control the danger. Those are not the same thing.”
Her face crumpled slightly.
I hated that I was right.
I hated more that I still loved her.
I opened the door.
Cold rain blew into the hallway.
Across the street, beneath a dead maple tree, a gray sedan was parked with its headlights off.
The engine was running.
The moment I looked at it, the car pulled away.
My phone rang.
Not the burner.
My own.
Unknown number.
I answered.
For two seconds, nobody spoke.
Then a man said, “Daniel Mercer?”
“Yes.”
He exhaled slowly.
“My name is Ethan Madden.”
I gripped the phone tighter.
Behind me, my mother whispered, “Don’t.”
May you like
The man on the line continued.
“If Lenora is with you, do not let her leave with your son.”
