Chapter 8 - The Woman the Records Said Was Dead
We drove to Vermont under a sky the color of wet newspaper. Daniel came with us. Vincent's driver stayed outside the small law office where Miriam Hale had agreed to meet, and Vincent left his phone in the car at Ethan's request.
Miriam was in her seventies, with silver hair and a voice that made every sentence sound measured. She looked at Ethan for a long time before she spoke.
"You have Lucy's eyes," she said.
Ethan's breath caught. "You knew her?"
"I was there when she delivered you."
The room seemed to shrink. Miriam held a tissue but did not use it. Her attorney sat beside her with a notebook open.
"Lucy Mercer came to the clinic frightened," Miriam said. "She was nineteen, alone, and certain someone was following her. She said she'd been promised a safe place to give birth. After the delivery, a physician told her the baby hadn't survived. It was a lie."
Ethan stared at the carpet. "Who told her that?"
"Dr. Halden. I heard him. I tried to intervene, but I was ordered out of the room. The next morning Lucy was gone, and the clinic records had been altered."
"And me?"
Miriam swallowed. "I saw you alive. A healthy little boy. I kept a copy of the intake register because I knew something was wrong."
She slid a photocopy across the table. Lucy Mercer's name appeared beside an infant's weight and time of birth. There was no father's name.
"Did Sophia take him?" Vincent asked.
"I didn't see the transfer," Miriam said. "I saw Sophia Reynolds arrive with Eleanor Moretti that afternoon. I reported my concerns later, but by then the clinic was closing and the records had vanished."
Daniel asked careful questions about dates, witnesses, and documents. Miriam answered what she could and refused to guess about the rest. I admired her for that. The truth was serious enough without decoration.
Ethan picked up the photograph of Lucy holding him. "Did she want me?"
Miriam's eyes filled. "She held you until the doctor took you for what he called a routine examination. She sang to you. I remember because she couldn't stop crying when they carried you away."
Ethan pressed his hand over his mouth.
"She wanted you," Miriam said. "I can tell you that much."
I watched Vincent reach for Ethan's shoulder, then wait. Ethan moved closer to him. They sat that way while the attorney discussed how to seek a court order for records and how to arrange DNA testing through a qualified laboratory.
"What happened to Lucy?" Noah asked.
Miriam looked at him. "I don't know. The death certificate was issued by a doctor I never met. I searched for her years later. There were rumors she had moved west under another name. I couldn't verify them."
"Why didn't you go public?" Vincent asked.
"I tried," she said. "I lost my job. My husband was threatened with a lawsuit. I testified when an investigation finally opened, but the witness who could corroborate the transfer disappeared. I have lived with what I couldn't prove."
On the drive back, Ethan didn't speak for nearly an hour. Then he asked Vincent whether the first time he'd held him had felt real.
"More real than anything," Vincent said. "You wrapped your hand around my finger. I remember thinking I had to become someone worthy of you."
"Did you?"
Vincent looked out the windshield. "Not always. I made mistakes. But loving you was never one of them."
Ethan turned his face toward the window. I saw his reflection wipe away a tear.
We stopped at a roadside diner. Noah ordered pancakes despite the late hour. Ethan asked for fries and barely touched them. I went to the counter for coffee and found Vincent beside me.
"I owe you more apologies than I can count," he said.
"Apologies aren't a plan."
"I know. I'm cooperating with the audit. I gave Daniel authority to obtain records from my office. I'm prepared for whatever they show."
"Even if they show your family did something criminal?"
"Especially then."
I studied him. The man I had loved eighteen years earlier would have said he could make everything right with one phone call. The man standing beside me now looked frightened, and perhaps that was the beginning of honesty.
"Noah doesn't owe you a relationship," I said.
"I know that too."
"And Ethan doesn't owe Sophia forgiveness."
"Agreed."
We carried the coffee back to the booth. For a few minutes we talked about school calendars and the cost of textbooks, things I knew how to discuss without feeling the floor disappear beneath me.
Near midnight, Daniel's phone rang. He listened, asked the caller to repeat a name, and wrote something on a napkin.
"A records researcher found an old legal name change," he said after hanging up. "A woman named Lucy Mercer became Laura Mitchell in 2009. There is a current address in Oregon."
Ethan gripped the edge of the table. "Is she alive?"
"The records suggest she may be," Daniel said. "We still have to verify it's the same person."
Ethan looked at the photograph on his phone, then at Vincent.
"I want to find her," he said. "But I don't want her to think I'm coming to replace you."
Vincent took his hand across the table.
May you like
"There is room in your life for every person who truly loves you," he said. "You don't have to choose."
For the first time since Harvard, Ethan let himself cry.
