Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURE THAT WASN'T MINE
“That's not my signature.”
I snatched the paper from Nathan's hand.
Twenty-eight years had passed, but I knew how I signed my own name.
The L was wrong.
The final letters leaned in the opposite direction.
And I had never written my middle initial that way.
“This is a forgery,” I said.
Nathan nodded.
“I think so.”
“Then why did you let me stand here believing I gave away someone else's child?”
“Because we don't know who signed it.”
David looked toward the wedding coordinator hovering near the entrance.
“Could you give us a few minutes?”
She quietly directed the remaining staff away.
The lobby emptied.
Suddenly, there were only five of us standing beneath an enormous arrangement of white roses.
Me.
My husband.
My daughter.
The man she loved.
And a woman who believed we'd stolen her child.
Rebecca watched me examine the document.
“I know you didn't sign it,” she said.
That surprised me.
“Then why come here?”
“Because I wanted to hear you say it.”
I stared at her.
“You could have called.”
“I tried.”
David looked away.
Rebecca continued.
“Three weeks ago, I sent a letter to your home. It was returned unopened.”
My eyes went straight to my husband.
“David?”
He didn't deny it.
“I intercepted it.”
The words landed between us.
“You had no right.”
“I thought I was protecting Emma.”
“From what? The truth?”
He rubbed his forehead.
“From a stranger accusing us of something she couldn't prove.”
Rebecca's jaw tightened.
“I never accused Laura.”
“You showed up at a wedding!”
“Because you wouldn't let me speak to her!”
Their voices rose.
I stepped between them.
“Enough.”
They fell silent.
I turned to Rebecca.
“Why did you use my name at the bakery?”
Her expression softened.
“I didn't use your name. I used Emma's.”
I remembered the baker's explanation.
Someone had pretended to be my daughter.
Rebecca nodded.
“I told them the bride had requested that the cake not be released to Laura Mitchell.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought David would have to come collect it.”
I stared.
“You used my daughter's wedding cake to force a confrontation with my husband?”
“Yes.”
It was the first thing she'd admitted without an excuse.
“I was desperate,” she said. “And I was wrong.”
I shook my head.
“You frightened a bride the day before her wedding.”
Rebecca looked at Emma.
“I know. I'm sorry.”
Emma wiped her cheeks.
“I wish you had just talked to me.”
“I tried, sweetheart.”
The word made me stiffen.
Rebecca noticed.
“I didn't mean—”
“Don't call my daughter that.”
She nodded.
“All right.”
For a moment, I felt cruel.
Then I remembered the photograph.
My husband beside a woman holding a newborn on the day Emma was born.
I turned to David.
“Why were you in Rebecca's hospital room?”
He answered quietly.
“Because she was alone.”
Rebecca looked surprised.
David continued.
“Her husband had left months earlier. She'd gone into labor early, just like you.”
“And you happened to be there?”
“No. I heard someone crying outside the nursery.”
He looked at Rebecca.
“She was sitting in a wheelchair. Nobody was explaining what had happened.”
Rebecca stared at the floor.
“I remember a man bringing me water.”
David nodded.
“That was me.”
I looked at the photograph again.
“Then why were you holding her baby's blanket?”
His face changed.
“Because the nurse asked me to.”
“What nurse?”
He hesitated.
I felt something cold move through me.
“David.”
“Margaret Collins.”
I knew that name.
Not personally.
But I remembered it from Emma's baby book.
The nurse who had helped me through delivery.
The woman who'd stayed beside my bed when the doctor said I needed rest.
“Margaret Collins,” I repeated.
Rebecca's eyes widened.
“That's the nurse who told me my daughter died.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Nathan cleared his throat.
“She died eight years ago.”
I looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because her name is in the records my father kept.”
He removed a small notebook from his pocket.
A worn blue cover.
Elastic band around the middle.
“My father died last spring,” Nathan explained. “When I was cleaning out his office, I found a locked cabinet containing old hospital files.”
I studied him.
“You found these documents last spring?”
“Yes.”
“And you waited until six weeks ago to tell Emma?”
Nathan swallowed.
“I didn't understand what they meant.”
“Did you tell your mother?”
His expression darkened.
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
I hadn't known that.
Emma had told me his mother had passed away years ago, but Nathan rarely discussed his childhood.
“I'm sorry,” I said automatically.
He nodded.
Then he opened the notebook.
“Most of this is financial information. Hospital reimbursements. Patient transfers. Names of staff members.”
He turned to a marked page.
“But someone wrote one sentence across the bottom.”
He handed it to me.
The Mitchell child must never be returned to Room 214.
My skin prickled.
“Returned?”
Nathan nodded.
“That word bothered me too.”
David moved closer.
“Let me see.”
Nathan held the notebook away.
“No.”
His tone was so sharp that David stopped.
I looked at Nathan.
“Why are you afraid of my husband?”
“I'm not afraid of him.”
“Then what?”
Nathan looked at Emma.
She shook her head slightly.
He closed the notebook.
“There's something my father told me before he died.”
I waited.
“He said if I ever found the blue book, I should burn it.”
Rebecca stared.
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you?”
Nathan looked at Emma.
“Because I was getting married.”
I frowned.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He took Emma's hand.
“When I found the photograph, I recognized David. I'd seen him standing beside Emma in hundreds of family pictures.”
“And?”
“I started asking questions.”
Emma whispered, “Nathan.”
He continued.
“Six weeks ago, I showed Emma the hospital form. We confronted David together.”
I turned to my daughter.
“You confronted your father without telling me?”
She nodded miserably.
“We thought there might have been a mistake.”
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
Emma began crying again.
“Because Dad said you almost died after I was born.”
My breath caught.
David looked down.
Emma continued.
“He said you were very sick. That there were things you didn't remember. He told us finding out what happened might hurt you.”
I stared at my husband.
“That's what you told her?”
“It was true.”
“You also told me our daughter had a routine birth.”
David's silence was unbearable.
I turned to Rebecca.
“Do you believe Emma is your daughter?”
She took a slow breath.
“I don't know.”
“Then what are you looking for?”
She opened her purse and removed a tiny hospital bracelet.
The plastic had yellowed.
Its metal clasp was scratched.
On the inside, someone had engraved two letters.
R.E.
Rebecca held it carefully.
“This was returned to me with my daughter's belongings.”
I stared at it.
Then at my daughter.
Emma had a faint crescent-shaped scar above her left wrist.
She'd had it as long as I could remember.
I reached for her hand.
She allowed me to turn it over.
The scar was still there.
Rebecca looked down.
Her face drained.
“That's where the bracelet cut her.”
I released Emma's hand.
A dreadful possibility opened inside me.
“David,” I whispered. “Tell me why our daughter has that scar.”
He shook his head.
“I don't know.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“You do.”
Then she removed one last thing from her handbag.
A faded hospital discharge envelope.
She opened it and withdrew a small photograph of a newborn's wrist.
The same crescent-shaped mark was visible above the bracelet.
Rebecca whispered, “This photograph was taken before the babies were moved.”
Emma covered her mouth.
I looked from the picture to her wrist.
Then Nathan said something that made the room go silent.
“There's one reason I never showed you that photograph, Laura.”
I turned toward him.
“What reason?”
He swallowed.
“Because the child wearing Rebecca's bracelet wasn't Emma.”
May you like
He pointed toward the photograph.
“According to my father's notes, that baby was me.”
