Chapter 7 - THE DEATH CERTIFICATE
Our first daughter was named Isabel.
She was born seven years earlier.
She lived for forty-three minutes.
Daniel told me she had a heart defect.
He would not let me see her body.
Lorraine said the hospital had already taken care of everything.
I was twenty-four.
Exhausted.
Medicated.
Grieving.
I believed them.
Now Daniel claimed there was something else to tell.
Officer Holloway traced the call to a disposable phone.
She could not prove Daniel had made it.
But I knew his voice.
The next morning, she requested Isabel’s hospital records.
There were none.
No birth certificate.
No death certificate.
No admission under my name on the date I remembered giving birth.
The private clinic where it happened had closed six years earlier.
Its director had moved overseas.
I began questioning my own memory.
Had Isabel died?
Had she been born where Daniel said?
Had Lorraine taken her too?
A federal agent named Marcus Bell joined the investigation.
He specialized in trafficking and illegal adoption cases.
He reviewed the Mercer ledger.
“The entries may represent children placed through private networks.”
“Sold?”
“We do not know yet.”
He spoke carefully because Sophie and Mia were nearby.
I sent them to the playroom with the social worker.
Then I asked again.
“Were my daughters sold?”
“Your two living daughters were legally registered.”
“And Isabel?”
“No record exists.”
I covered my mouth.
Agent Bell opened another file.
“We located the former clinic nurse.”
“She remembers Lorraine.”
“She remembers a young mother delivering a healthy girl.”
Healthy.
The word struck harder than any scream.
“Did the baby die?”
“The nurse says no.”
“What happened?”
“Lorraine told staff that the mother had agreed to a private adoption.”
“I never agreed.”
“We believe your signature was forged.”
The room blurred.
Daniel’s threat suddenly made sense.
He was not going to reveal something I had done.
He was going to show the world a document claiming I gave my daughter away.
Agent Bell placed the forged consent form in front of me.
The signature resembled mine.
But the final letter curved the wrong direction.
Daniel had practiced my name for years.
“Where is she?”
“We are searching.”
A second document was attached.
It listed the adoptive parents only by initials.
P.G. and A.G.
Officer Holloway looked at the page.
“Paul Grayson.”
The prosecutor who tried to silence me.
Agent Bell nodded.
“His wife’s name is Amanda.”
My heart began pounding.
“Do they have a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“She is seven.”
He opened a photograph.
A little girl stood beside Grayson at a county fair.
She had my dark eyes.
May you like
She had Sophie’s smile.
And around her neck was the silver moon pendant I had placed in Isabel’s hospital blanket.
