Chapter 4 - GRACE HOLLOWAY
Patricia denied the signature for eleven minutes.
First she said it was forged.
Then she said she had signed dozens of hospital forms while sedated.
Then she said the name "Holloway" had been added later.
By the fourth explanation, even George stopped helping her.
Vanessa stood beside the fireplace with the scorched transfer form on the stone hearth between her shoes.
"Pick one."
Patricia stared at her.
"Excuse me?"
"Pick one story and stay with it."
"You are upset."
"I am asking why your signature is on a document transferring someone else's newborn."
"And I told you I don't remember signing it."
"Then why did Dad try to burn it?"
George turned on Vanessa.
"I was burning Eleanor's stolen papers."
"That paper wasn't hers."
He said nothing.
Vanessa's eyes moved between the two people she had called Mom and Dad her entire life.
The arrogance was gone now.
So was the polished cruelty.
What remained was something rawer.
Fear.
I felt no satisfaction watching it.
But I also refused to let pity rewrite the afternoon.
A person could be both wounded and responsible for wounding someone else.
That truth would matter later.
For now, another truth was waiting at the gate.
My phone vibrated.
The security desk was calling.
I answered.
"Mrs. Carter, there's a woman here asking for you."
"Name?"
There was a pause.
"She says her name is Lydia Holloway."
My eyes lifted to Patricia.
Patricia heard the name through the phone.
Her entire body stiffened.
Vanessa saw it.
"She's alive?"
I didn't answer immediately.
I had been searching for Lydia for six weeks.
Every address connected to her was old.
Every phone number was dead.
The investigator I hired had found one Social Security trace from Arkansas, then nothing.
Two days earlier, I had sent a letter to a post office box associated with a church pantry outside Memphis.
I had not expected a response this quickly.
"Send her to the main house," I told security.
Patricia crossed the room.
"No."
Ethan looked at her.
"Why not?"
"Because this has gone far enough."
"If she's nobody, what are you afraid of?"
Patricia's face hardened.
"I will not be ambushed in public by some criminal from thirty years ago."
Vanessa turned slowly.
"Criminal?"
Patricia realized too late what she had revealed.
Vanessa's voice went quiet.
"You said you didn't know her."
Patricia looked at me as if I had forced the mistake out of her mouth.
"I know the name."
"You said nobody."
"I meant nobody relevant."
"You called her a criminal."
George interrupted.
"Lydia Holloway stole from our hotel."
Caleb, still near the library doors, took a step forward.
"My grandmother said she was framed."
George snapped toward him.
"Your grandmother folded sheets for a living."
Caleb's face changed.
I had seen wealthy men make that mistake before.
They believed a job title measured the value of a witness.
Caleb looked at George with a steadiness he had not shown on the lawn.
"She folded sheets."
He touched the locket in his pocket.
"And she remembered everything."
The front doorbell rang.
No one moved.
Then the security manager opened the library door.
"Mrs. Carter?"
A woman stood behind him.
She was thin.
Late fifties, perhaps sixty.
Her gray-brown hair was pulled into a loose knot.
She wore a faded blue dress beneath a borrowed cardigan and carried a paper pharmacy bag in one hand.
She looked nothing like the Mitchell family.
Until she looked at Vanessa.
Then the room changed.
Vanessa's eyes were hazel.
So were Lydia's.
Vanessa had a small vertical crease in her left cheek when she was angry.
Lydia had the same crease now.
Vanessa's hands trembled.
Lydia's did too.
Patricia whispered one word.
"No."
Lydia looked at her.
Thirty years of fear seemed to pass between them without sound.
Then Lydia looked back at Vanessa.
The pharmacy bag slipped from her hand.
A bottle rolled across the floor.
She did not notice.
"Grace."
Vanessa stepped backward.
"Don't call me that."
Lydia stopped.
Her eyes filled instantly.
"I'm sorry."
"Who are you?"
Lydia swallowed.
"My name is Lydia Holloway."
"I know your name."
Vanessa's voice shook.
"Who are you to me?"
Patricia moved between them.
"She is nobody to you."
Lydia's expression changed.
Not dramatically.
She simply stopped looking afraid.
"You said the same thing at St. Anne's."
Patricia went still.
"You told the nurse I was nobody."
Lydia stepped farther into the room.
"You told them I was confused from medication."
Vanessa looked at Patricia.
"What is she talking about?"
Patricia raised her voice.
"This woman was arrested for theft."
Lydia nodded.
"Yes."
Everyone looked at her.
She did not hide from it.
"I was arrested three weeks after you took my daughter."
Vanessa grabbed the back of a chair.
"Took?"
Lydia looked directly at her.
"You were born Grace Anne Holloway."
Vanessa shook her head violently.
"No."
"September fourteenth, 1998."
"Stop."
"Two forty-six in the morning."
"Stop."
"Seven pounds, one ounce."
"I said stop!"
Vanessa's scream echoed through the library.
Lydia did stop.
Tears ran down her face.
Patricia seized the moment.
"You see?"
She turned to Vanessa.
"She is unstable."
Lydia looked at her.
"I was unstable after you told me my baby died."
Nobody breathed.
Vanessa stared at Lydia.
"What?"
Lydia's voice broke.
"They told me you stopped breathing."
She pressed one hand to her chest.
"They said I couldn't see you because the hospital had already moved you."
Patricia's face had become expressionless.
Lydia continued.
"I begged for your body."
Vanessa's knuckles tightened around the chair.
"The hospital administrator said there had been a paperwork error."
Lydia looked at me.
"Then Mrs. Mitchell came to my room."
Vanessa looked at Patricia.
"Why?"
Lydia answered.
"She said she had lost a baby too."
Patricia closed her eyes.
"She said grief made women imagine things."
Lydia laughed softly through her tears.
"Then she told me I should go home and forget St. Anne's."
Vanessa whispered.
"But you didn't."
"No."
"What happened?"
Lydia looked down.
"I went back three days later."
She touched the locket Caleb had placed on the table.
"A laundry supervisor named Marie let me into a staff corridor."
Caleb's eyes widened.
"My grandmother."
Lydia nodded.
"Marie believed me."
Caleb wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist.
Lydia continued.
"She showed me a nursery log."
"And?" Ethan asked.
Lydia looked at Patricia.
"My baby had never been listed as deceased."
Vanessa's knees seemed to weaken.
Ethan moved toward her.
She pushed his hand away.
"Then whose baby died?"
Lydia looked at Patricia.
Patricia refused to answer.
I did.
"Patricia's."
Vanessa covered her mouth.
Lydia nodded.
"Marie and I went to the police."
"What did they do?"
"They called George Mitchell."
Everyone turned toward him.
George's face did not move.
Lydia laughed once, bitterly.
"That was the kind of city Nashville was then."
"What happened after they called him?" Ethan asked.
Lydia looked at George.
"Two weeks later, diamond earrings were found in my apartment."
Caleb whispered.
"The hotel theft."
"Yes."
"Were they yours?"
"No."
George finally spoke.
"You pleaded guilty."
Lydia's eyes flashed.
"Because my public defender told me I'd lose five years of my life if I fought you."
"You admitted the theft."
"I admitted I was poor enough to be afraid."
That sentence hit the room harder than anything I had said on the lawn.
Vanessa looked at the floor.
I wondered whether she remembered calling me a tramp.
Lydia looked at her daughter.
"I searched for you after I got out."
"How long were you in prison?"
"Fourteen months."
Vanessa flinched.
"I found one photograph in a society magazine."
Lydia's voice shook.
"Patricia Mitchell holding a one-year-old daughter named Vanessa."
She looked at Vanessa's face as if trying to memorize the adult version of the child she had lost.
"You had my eyes."
Vanessa whispered.
"Lots of people have hazel eyes."
Lydia nodded.
"Yes."
She took one small step forward.
"But not everyone has a crescent-shaped birthmark behind the right knee."
Vanessa froze.
Ethan looked at her.
I did too.
Vanessa's hand moved unconsciously toward the skirt of her dress.
Patricia turned away.
That movement was confession enough.
Vanessa's voice was barely audible.
"How do you know that?"
Lydia's tears came faster.
"Because I kissed it when the nurse placed you on my chest."
Vanessa sat down hard in the chair.
For the first time since I had met her, she looked small.
Then Lydia reached into her cardigan pocket.
"There is one more thing."
She removed a folded envelope so old the edges had turned brown.
Patricia's face changed again.
"Where did you get that?"
Lydia looked at her.
"From Marie."
Caleb stepped closer.
"My grandmother had that?"
"She mailed it to me twenty-one years ago."
Lydia unfolded the letter.
"She said she stole it from George Mitchell's office the night she quit."
George moved toward her.
Ethan blocked him.
Lydia opened the paper.
At the bottom was George's signature.
At the top was the letterhead of St. Anne's Medical Center.
And in the middle was one sentence that made Vanessa stop crying.
I read it twice before I understood what it meant.
AUTHORIZATION APPROVED TO SUBSTITUTE INFANT HOLLOWAY RECORDS UNDER DECEASED MITCHELL CHILD FILE PENDING PRIVATE PLACEMENT.
Vanessa raised her eyes to George.
"You knew from the beginning."
George's face hardened.
Lydia shook her head.
"No."
We all looked at her.
She pointed to the date on the letter.
May you like
"He knew before the beginning."
The authorization had been signed six weeks before either baby was born.
