Chapter 7: What Patricia Kept and Why
The investigation took four months.
Caitlyn spent them at Carol's, with the yellow kitchen and the dog and the window that didn't lock.
She went back to school.
She sat in the middle of the classroom, not the back.
She didn't make many friends, but she made one — a girl named Priya who ate lunch quickly and then spent the rest of the period reading, which suited Caitlyn perfectly.
She visited Daniel twice more.
The second time, Sophie was there.
Sophie shook her hand like a small businessperson, looked her directly in the eye, and said: "Dad said you had a hard time.
I'm not going to ask about it.
But if you ever want to come to a match, I play on Saturdays at ten."
Caitlyn went to a match on the third Saturday.
She stood on the sideline in a borrowed jacket while Daniel shouted encouragement and Sophie scored twice and the whole team ran at each other in a screaming pile.
Caitlyn watched and felt something she didn't have a name for yet — warm and unfamiliar and slightly frightening, the way good things feel when you are not used to them.
On the drive home, Sophie fell asleep in the back seat.
Daniel kept his eyes on the road.
"She likes you," he said quietly.
"She doesn't do the handshake thing with people she doesn't like.
She just says 'nice to meet you' and looks away."
"I didn't know there was a system," Caitlyn said.
"There's always a system with Sophie."
A pause.
"I like her too," Caitlyn said.
He nodded.
Kept driving.
But his hands on the wheel were less tight than they had been on the first visit.
In the fourth month, Ruth called.
"Can you come in?" she said.
"There are some things we need to go over with you."
The county office.
The same room with the large chairs and the empty table.
But this time it was Ruth and Mr.
Aldren and a woman from the police family liaison team named Sergeant Greaves, who had a calm face and a direct way of speaking that Caitlyn immediately trusted.
"We've completed the investigation," Sergeant Greaves said.
"I want to walk you through what we found, and then we'll talk about what happens next."
Caitlyn nodded.
"Patricia Monroe took you from the hospital two days after your birth," Sergeant Greaves said.
"You were not abandoned.
You were not given up.
Your father — Daniel — was told you had not survived.
Your birth mother was a woman named Lena Marsh, Daniel's younger sister."
The room was very quiet.
"She d*ed three days after you were born," Sergeant Greaves continued.
"Complications.
It was genuine — we've confirmed that.
But Patricia was present at the hospital.
She was a family acquaintance.
And in the confusion of those days, with Daniel in pieces and no other immediate family, she took you."
"She stole me," Caitlyn said.
Sergeant Greaves didn't soften it.
"Yes."
"And kept the boot because it was his," Caitlyn said slowly.
"Daniel's.
Something of his that he'd left behind.
She kept it."
"We believe so."
"And hid it under my bed."
"Yes."
Caitlyn looked at the table.
"She wanted me to find it eventually."
"We think," Ruth said carefully, "that there may have been a part of her that — yes.
That wanted it found.
That's not a legal conclusion.
But yes."
"What happens to her?"
Sergeant Greaves opened a page in her folder.
"She's been charged.
The charges relate to the unlawful removal of a child and the falsification of records.
The fire is being treated as a separate matter — the investigation into the door and Diane's role is ongoing."
"And Diane?"
"Also being assessed.
She's an adult now.
The investigation is active."
Caitlyn sat with all of it.
Twenty-three years of a locked door.
A mother who was not a mother.
A father who had spent two decades grieving a daughter he didn't know was alive.
A boot kept under a child's bed like a message waiting for the right moment.
"Why did she take me?" Caitlyn asked.
"If she didn't want me."
Ruth and Sergeant Greaves exchanged a look.
"That," Ruth said, "is the question we can't fully answer.
We think she wanted to.
In the beginning.
We think she believed she was doing something right.
And then you arrived, and you were real, and real children are harder than intentions."
"And she couldn't give me back," Caitlyn said.
"Because then she'd have to explain."
"Yes," Ruth said.
"That's what we think."
Caitlyn stood up.
Walked to the window.
Looked out at the car park below — ordinary cars, ordinary afternoon, a pigeon walking in a straight line across the tarmac as if it had somewhere important to be.
"She kept the boot," she said again, almost to herself.
Nobody answered.
She turned back to the room.
May you like
"Okay," she said.
"What do I do now?"
