Chapter 3
The officers arrived before I crossed the lawn.
One spoke with me in the kitchen. The other separated Mom and Claire in the dining room. Marcus waited near the front door.
I answered the same questions more than once.
My name. The delivery date. The hospital where I gave birth. The hospital where I woke.
When the officer asked whether I had ever received an official death certificate, I closed my eyes.
“Mom gave us a packet,” I said. “I thought it included everything.”
“Do you still have it?”
“At home.”
She wrote that down.
I had kept the packet in a box with the yellow socks. I rarely opened it. Grief had made me careful around those things, and Mom had used that care to keep me from asking.
The officer told me not to destroy, alter, or hand over anything without keeping a record. She asked for copies of the documents I had found.
Then she explained that no one could settle a child’s parentage and placement at a dinner table.
There would be records to obtain. People to interview. Decisions to make with the appropriate professionals.
I nodded.
I wanted to run next door and take Noah in my arms. I also knew he did not know why I was crying.
“Can I see him?” I asked.
Claire said yes.
The officer asked us to keep the conversation calm and avoid telling Noah a story we had not yet verified. I hated hearing the word verified.
I understood it anyway.
Claire and I walked next door.
She kept a few feet between us.
At Mrs. Turner’s porch, I stopped.
“How did you learn the truth three weeks ago?”
Claire looked at the closed door.
“I was unpacking old adoption files. There was a hospital paper behind an agency letter. It had your name.”
“You never read it before?”
“I had read the papers Mom told me were important. I trusted her.”
I looked at my sister.
“So did I.”
Mrs. Turner opened the door.
Noah stood behind her wearing blue pajamas. He held his stuffed fox by one leg.
“Aunt Maya?”
I bent down.
“Hi.”
“You’re crying.”
“I’ve had a difficult evening.”
He looked at Claire.
“Mommy’s crying too.”
Claire knelt beside me.
“Some grown-up things are being sorted out,” she said. “You’re safe. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He moved into her arms.
I watched him rest his face against her shoulder.
She was his mother in every way he understood. I could not erase that with a piece of paper or five years of longing.
My heart hurt so sharply I pressed a hand against my chest.
Noah looked at me over her shoulder.
“Do you want Fox?”
I nodded.
He handed me the toy.
One ear had been repaired with uneven stitches. The fabric smelled faintly of soap.
I held it while he asked whether everyone would still eat the cake Claire had promised him.
“Yes,” Claire said.
I could not speak.
We took him to Claire’s house rather than back into Mom’s dining room. Mrs. Turner came too. I was grateful for the ordinary way she filled his glass and found his slippers.
Claire put him to bed while I sat in the hallway.
He called for her twice.
She went both times.
When she came out, I handed back the fox.
“I need copies of his records,” I said. “Medical, placement, adoption. Everything.”
“You can have them.”
“Do you have an adoption decree?”
“Yes.”
The answer frightened me.
There was a court involved. A decision had been made somewhere without me, based on papers I had not seen.
Claire took a binder from a bedroom cupboard. It was organized by date.
I had dreamed of a baby book. She had kept one.
A photograph slid from the front.
Noah at six months, smiling in a bathtub.
I picked it up.
Claire watched me.
“You can keep that.”
“I want copies of all the pictures.”
“You’ll have them.”
Marcus called while she copied the documents. He said the officers had asked Mom for contact information for the agency and the person who prepared the papers. She was refusing to say more until she spoke with an attorney.
I told him I was going home alone.
He asked whether I wanted him to leave our house.
“Yes.”
“I’ll stay with a friend.”
I ended the call.
Claire placed the copies in a bag.
At the door, she said, “I love him.”
“I can see that.”
“I didn’t know he had been taken from you.”
“You knew for three weeks.”
Her eyes filled.
“I know.”
I went home and opened the grief box.
The yellow socks were at the top.
Beneath them was the packet Mom had given me.
I spread its pages across the kitchen table. There were sympathy cards, bills, and a printed letter with a hospital logo.
No official certificate.
No burial record.
No photograph.
I had accepted so much because I could not survive asking for more.
May you like
I called the hospital listed on the discharge paper. The records office was closed. I wrote down the number and waited for morning.
Then I sat with the yellow socks in my hands until the sun began to rise.
