At 68, my daughter told me to cover my body at a family pool party — then her husband took off his shirt and everyone went silent.

Diane Paulson drove down from Hartford the following Saturday.

She was a small woman in her late sixties, with Carol's careful eyes and a canvas bag she held in both hands like it contained something breakable.

She sat at my kitchen table and opened the bag and laid out Carol's copy of the agency document alongside a second envelope I hadn't seen before.

"Carol wrote a letter," Diane said.

"Before she died.

She addressed it to Ryan but she asked me to use my judgment about when to give it." She slid the envelope across the table.

"I think the time is now."

Ryan picked it up.

Turned it over.

Set it down.

"I'll read it later," he said.

"Tell me about the agency first."

Diane nodded.

"The woman who ran it was named Loretta Marsh.

She operated out of a private practice in Burlington from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s.

She wasn't licensed.

She positioned herself as a consultant — someone who facilitated private arrangements between families." Diane folded her hands.

"Carol found her name in the document.

I did some research after Carol passed.

Loretta Marsh died in 1989.

But her records — her actual case files — were purchased by a licensed agency in Vermont when her practice closed.

That agency still exists."

"So the records exist," Jessica said.

"Potentially, yes."

"Which means there could be documentation of every arrangement she made," Jessica said.

"Every mother she lied to."

"That's what I believe, yes."

Daniel, who had driven up that morning and was leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, said, "What would it take to access those records?"

"A lawyer," Diane said.

"Possibly a court order, depending on how the records were sealed.

But given that the original arrangements were made under fraudulent pretenses—" She paused.

"There's an argument that the normal privacy protections don't apply in the same way."

Ryan was quiet.

He'd been quiet since Diane arrived, in the particular way that meant he was processing rather than absent.

"How many cases do you think there were?" he asked.

"I don't know.

Carol's document suggested Loretta Marsh ran a significant operation.

The fees were structured.

The language was professional.

This wasn't improvised." Diane looked at him steadily.

"I think there were many."

Ryan nodded slowly.

He picked up Carol's letter.

Turned it over again.

"I'm going to read this now," he said.

"If that's all right."

No one spoke.

He opened the envelope carefully, the way you open something you can't re-close.

Unfolded two pages of Carol's handwriting — I could see it from across the table, neat and slightly slanted, the hand of a woman who had written carefully her whole life.

He read.

We waited.

When he finished, he folded the pages and held them in both hands and looked at the window for a long moment.

"She says she's sorry," he said.

"She says she didn't know, when she took me, that my mother had been lied to.

She says she would have done it differently if she'd known." He paused.

"She says she hopes I find her.

She says she hopes she's someone worth finding."

I pressed my hand flat on the table.

"She also says—" His voice shifted slightly.

"She says the scar on my stomach was from a surgery the day I was born.

She says the doctor told her it had healed well.

She says she used to trace it when I was a baby, when I was sleeping, and she would think about the woman who had carried me and wonder if she was all right."

The kitchen was very still.

"She was thinking about you," Diane said softly, to me.

"Even then."

I couldn't speak for a moment.

Ryan looked across the table at me.

"She was right," he said.

"You are someone worth finding."

Jessica made a small sound.

She turned toward the window.

Daniel uncrossed his arms and came to the table and sat down.

"Okay," he said, in the voice he uses when he is ready to solve something.

"Here's what we're going to do.