Chapter 10 - THE WOMAN AT THE SHELTER
The shelter had closed three years earlier.
Its former director, Marian Holt, agreed to meet Rosa and me at a public library.
She remembered Anna immediately.
“She arrived with bruises and a baby,” Marian said.
“A baby?”
“A little girl. Maybe six months old.”
Anna never used her family name. She said the child’s father belonged to a powerful family and wanted custody because the baby’s medical needs could generate business for his company.
Marian believed Anna was frightened and exhausted, but clear-minded.
One night, two attorneys arrived with emergency guardianship papers. They claimed Anna was mentally unstable and had kidnapped her own child from the legal father.
The documents carried a judge’s signature.
The shelter had no authority to resist.
The baby was taken.
Anna disappeared the following morning.
“What was the child’s name?” I asked.
Marian closed her eyes, searching her memory.
“Emily.”
Lily’s middle name was Emily.
Grant chose it.
I had believed it belonged to a favorite aunt who died before we met.
Rosa placed a photograph of Grant on the table.
“Was this the baby’s father?”
Marian shook her head.
“No. He came later.”
“Who took the child?”
Marian studied photographs of Mercer relatives.
Her finger stopped on Grant’s late father, William Mercer.
“That man signed the papers.”
William could not have been the child’s father. He was nearly sixty at the time.
But he controlled the company and had connections throughout the county court system.
Marian gave us a box Anna left behind.
Inside were billing ledgers, photographs of damaged medical devices and a laboratory report concerning a respiratory monitor.
The monitor had malfunctioned during home use.
A child suffered permanent injuries.
The family received a settlement and signed a confidentiality agreement.
At the bottom of the report, Anna had written:
They redesigned the serial number and sold it again.
The replacement device was billed to another child.
The patient name had been covered with black ink, but ultraviolet analysis revealed the first letters.
L-I-L.
Rosa looked at me.
“Was Lily ever prescribed a respiratory monitor?”
“Yes. She was born prematurely.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Mercer Pediatric Systems.”
I could barely finish the sentence.
May you like
Lily had used that machine beside my bed for four months.
Grant told me it was the safest model available.
