Chapter 6 - THE BABY WHO DISAPPEARED
Elena had given birth seventeen years earlier.
A daughter.
She named her Maya.
For eleven hours, Elena held her child.
Then everything disappeared.
She had been twenty-one, poor, alone, and still grieving her mother.
The hospital told her Maya suffered catastrophic respiratory failure.
Elena never saw the body.
Never received ashes.
Only paperwork.
Genevieve later discovered the death certificate was fraudulent.
“You knew your daughter might be alive?” Lawson asked.
“Genevieve told me six months before she died.”
“And you did nothing?”
Elena slapped him.
Prescott moved.
Lawson stopped him.
Elena’s eyes burned.
“I searched every day.”
The room went quiet.
“She found evidence Maya had been transferred out of the hospital under another infant’s record. Genevieve believed Conrad arranged it.”
“My father stole your child?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would he?”
Elena looked toward the old Mercer family photograph on Lawson’s wall.
“Because Maya’s blood profile was valuable.”
Lawson felt physically sick.
Conrad had spent his entire life calling family blood sacred.
Apparently he meant useful.
Genevieve followed financial transfers connected to Maya’s birth.
One led to a private adoption agency in Wisconsin.
Another to Dr. Yates.
“That’s why Yates knows you,” Lawson said.
Elena nodded.
“He was a resident at the hospital when Maya was born.”
Prescott pulled up Yates’s old employment history.
Correct hospital.
Correct year.
Lawson ordered investigators to search sealed adoption records legally through emergency court channels.
Meanwhile the twins weakened.
Blythe developed a fever.
Jonah stopped eating.
Seven days remained.
Lawson sat beside their beds until sunrise.
Blythe opened her eyes.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Is Elena family?”
He looked toward the hallway.
“I think so.”
“Then why doesn’t she hug you?”
Despite everything, Lawson smiled.
“Because she doesn’t like me very much.”
Jonah whispered:
“You’re hard to like sometimes.”
Lawson stared at his son.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
At noon, Prescott entered.
“We found the adoption agency.”
Lawson stood.
“And?”
“It closed fourteen years ago.”
“Records?”
“Partially destroyed in a flood.”
Of course.
“But we found one employee.”
The former director, Helen Crowley, agreed to speak.
She remembered the baby because Genevieve had visited her years later.
“Helen said the infant wasn’t adopted through normal channels,” Prescott explained.
“What happened?”
“She was placed privately with a family connected to St. Vincent.”
“Name.”
Prescott hesitated.
“Yates.”
Lawson’s body went still.
“Franklin Yates adopted Elena’s daughter?”
“Not Franklin.”
Prescott turned the file around.
“His older brother.”
The child’s name had been changed.
Maya Ward became Amelia Yates.
May you like
Dr. Amelia Hart.
The transplant specialist currently treating Jonah and Blythe.
