Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
I told Dana about the clinic call and watched her expression sharpen over our secure video conference.
She reminded me not to approach medical records as though they were mine to demand.
Alice was an adult, and her privacy mattered even if my family had lied about her.
We could preserve what we possessed and ask the right people to investigate.
The firm's administrator confirmed the envelope had been mailed by certified post two weeks earlier.
It had been signed for at my parents' address by a person claiming to be my authorized recipient.
I had never authorized anyone.
Dana's assistant sent me the delivery receipt.
The signature looked like mine until I studied the second letter.
Someone had imitated me, badly.
That afternoon Maisie asked why we were not visiting Grandma again.
I told her that adults sometimes said hurtful things, and my job was to make sure she was safe.
'Are you mad at me?' she asked.
I knelt beside the couch.
'Never for what happened there.'
She considered that, then brought me her sketchbook.
Among the crayon houses and purple dogs was a picture of a woman with dark curls holding a baby.
'Where did you see her?' I asked.
Maisie pointed at the drawing.
'She came to the adoption office once. Miss Helen said I had to wait behind the yellow door.'
I remembered Helen Baird, the caseworker who had managed Maisie's placement.
She had been patient, attentive, and almost too eager to assure me that the birth family wanted anonymity.
I searched my old correspondence.
An email from Helen said the mother was deceased and that sealed records contained no information useful to me.
Those words had shaped four years of my life.
I forwarded the message to Dana.
By evening she had found a public licensing notice: Helen's agency had closed under regulatory review eighteen months earlier.
The notice did not establish a crime, but it gave us a reason to ask more questions.
At dinner Maisie placed an extra napkin beside her plate.
'For the lady who looks like me,' she explained.
I fought the urge to promise a reunion I could not guarantee.
Instead, I said we would search carefully and that none of the answers could change our family.
After she slept, an unknown number called my phone.
A woman's voice spoke before I could introduce myself.
'Grant, don't let your father know you're looking for me.'
I knew that voice.
I had heard it say my name in the rain, in the dark, and once in the doorway of an apartment I had been too stubborn to enter.
'Alice?'
A long silence followed.
May you like
Then she said, 'If you want to know what happened to our daughter, meet me where we said goodbye.'
