“I know.”
“And now the little girl I love is your daughter.”
I looked down at the hairbrush.
“I’ve waited five years to learn that my daughter is alive.”
Neither of us spoke.
There was no easy answer.
No simple way to make the years disappear.
But we both loved the same child.
And we knew that whatever happened next had to begin with protecting her.
***
Two days later, our attorney called with new information.
Investigators had identified an alarming discrepancy in the hospital’s neonatal records.
Two infants had apparently been assigned identification numbers that were later mixed up during a transfer.
One infant had been recorded as deceased.
Another had entered emergency protective care with incomplete identifying information.
Ellie’s earliest welfare record carried the identification number originally assigned to Lucy.
My hand tightened around the phone.
“So someone confused the babies?”
“That appears to be one part of what happened,” the attorney explained. “But it doesn’t account for every failure in the records.”
