Second, I called the hospital and asked for a copy of my complete medical records and my daughter's.
The woman on the phone was kind and efficient, and then she paused.
"Ma'am, I'm showing your records here, but for the infant — I'm sorry, I'm only seeing an intake and then a transfer notation. The rest would have been handled through the... the paperwork your husband processed. There's a name here. A private agency. Not one of ours."
"A private agency," I repeated.
"Meadowbrook Placement Services," she read. "That's — ma'am, that's an adoption agency. That doesn't seem right for a—"
I hung up and sat on the kitchen floor for a while.
Third, I called my brother, Daniel, who is a paramedic and the calmest person I know, and I told him everything, and I waited for him to tell me I was grief-crazed.
He didn't.
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he said, "Claire. Did you ever see her? With your own eyes?"
"No," I whispered. "Grant said it would be too hard."
"Do not tell Grant you called anyone," Daniel said, in a voice I'd never heard him use. "I'm coming over. Don't say a word to him tonight. Act normal."
I have never acted so hard in my life as I did at dinner that night, passing Grant the potatoes, while a jar full of my son's lunch money sat upstairs, slowly buying back a truth I was only beginning to see.
PART 3
Daniel brought a friend.
Her name was Ruth Okafor, and she was a family law attorney who had, in a previous career, worked in the state's child welfare office.
She listened to the whole thing at my kitchen table — Eli's account, the hospital's transfer notation, the name Meadowbrook — taking notes, her face getting stiller and stiller.
"Mrs. Bennett," she said finally. "I need to ask you some hard questions, and I need you to breathe through them."
"Okay."
"Was your husband under any financial pressure recently?"
I started to say no.
Then I stopped.
The second mortgage I'd found out about by accident. The "consulting losses" he wouldn't explain. The way he'd stopped opening the mail in front of me.
"Yes," I said slowly. "A lot, I think. More than he told me."
"Does he have any relationship — personal or otherwise — with anyone connected to a placement or adoption service?"
And that's when I remembered.
