Chapter 5: The Woman Who Called
James stepped back from me.
One step, just one, but I felt the distance of it.
"That's not possible," he said.
"She gave your sister's full name and date of birth," Diane said carefully.
"She knew the name of the hospital.
She said she'd been in contact with Carol during the pregnancy."
"Patricia has been d*ad for six years," James said.
"I was at her funeral."
Diane looked uncertain.
"I can only tell you what was reported to the desk.
The call came in at 2:47 this afternoon.
The woman identified herself as Patricia Mercer and said she was Carol's biological mother."
"Biological," I said.
James turned to look at me.
"Carol was adopted," he said slowly.
"I've told you that."
"You told me your parents adopted her when she was four.
You told me her birth parents were out of the picture."
"They were.
They have been since before I can remember." He ran a hand across his face.
"Patricia was our mother.
Our adoptive mother.
She p*ssed away in 2018.
I don't know who that woman was on the phone, but she wasn't Patricia."
"Could it have been Carol's birth mother?" I asked.
He was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know anything about her.
Carol never talked about it.
Not to me."
Diane set the clipboard down on the nurses' station counter.
"I'm not in a position to verify any of this.
What I can tell you is that the call was logged, and if this person makes a formal claim through the court, it will be part of the record."
"She can't just call a hospital and claim a baby," James said.
"No.
But she can contact child protective services.
She can contact a lawyer.
If she has any biological connection to the child, the court will consider it."
The baby in my arms shifted.
Her mouth opened and closed once, searching.
"She needs to be fed," Diane said gently.
"I can show you how, if you're staying."
I looked at James.
His face had gone the way it goes when he is working through something he doesn't have all the pieces for yet — still, focused, a little pale.
"We're staying," I said.
Diane nodded and led me toward the room with the bassinet.
James stayed in the corridor.
Through the glass I could see him take out his phone.
He stood with his back to the wall and made a call, and whoever picked up, he started talking immediately, low and fast, the way he talks when something is wrong and he needs it fixed.
I sat in the chair beside the bassinet and held Nora and did what Diane showed me, and Nora ate, and the room was very quiet.
I thought about a woman I had never met calling a hospital to claim a child she had no legal right to.
I thought about Carol, who had been alone for nine months and had still managed to write a letter.
I thought about James in the corridor, making calls in the dark.
I thought about the name I had been carrying for twenty-three years, and how it was no longer just a name.
When James came back in, his face had settled into something harder.
"That was my cousin," he said.
"He remembers Carol mentioning a woman.
A few years ago, before the argument.
He said Carol had been looking into her birth family.
He said she'd found someone."
"Her birth mother."
"He thinks so."
"And this woman knows about Nora."
"She must.
Carol must have told her." He sat down in the chair on the other side of the bassinet.
"She waited until Carol was gone to make her move."
I looked at him across the bassinet, across Nora sleeping between us.
"She's not taking her," I said.
"No," James said.
"She's not."
But neither of us slept much that night, and when morning came, the social worker arrived with paperwork in one hand and news in the other.
"There's been a formal inquiry," she said.
May you like
"A woman is claiming biological grandparent rights.
Her name is Sylvia Crane."
