Catherine set the phone down and pressed her palms flat against the desk until they steadied. Somewhere in a coastal town, a retired doctor was sleeping over a hidden file. She intended to wake him.
Theodore was already at the breakfast table when she came down, the newspaper folded with military precision beside his plate. He looked up and smiled, and the smile stopped at his eyes.
"You look tired," he said.
"I slept poorly."
"Ada Kowalski." He said the name the way a doctor names a symptom. "Susan Park's investigator has been knocking on doors all over this city, Catherine. Do you know what people are saying?"
"I know exactly what I'm doing."
"Do you?" He set down his cup. "An elderly nurse with a failing memory tells you a fairy tale about twins, and you send lawyers out at midnight. Listen to yourself."
Catherine poured her coffee with a steady hand. "I listened to myself for twenty-three years, Theodore. It bought me a locket and an empty grave."
"You prove my point with every sentence," he said.
"I stopped proving yours years ago," she said.
"Grief does strange things." His voice stayed soft and reasonable, a hand extended toward someone on a ledge. "It did before. After the fire, the doctors were very clear that—"
"Don't." The word cracked like ice on a lake. "Don't you dare use the doctors on me."
He studied her for a long moment. Then he reached inside his jacket and laid a folded letter on the table between them.
"I've asked the board to place a temporary hold on your discretionary signing authority at the foundation," he said. "Just until this passes. It's for your own protection."
Catherine stared at the letter. "You tried to freeze my foundation."
"I protected it." He spread his hands, the reasonable man. "There's a difference, my dear, and one day you'll thank me."
She picked up the letter, read its three cold paragraphs, and set it down again. When she spoke, her voice had changed. Something in it had hardened overnight, like steel left out in the frost.
"I am not unwell, Theodore. I am awake. There's a difference, and one day you'll learn it."
His smile thinned to a line. "Be careful, Catherine. A woman in your position, chasing ghosts in public. People start to wonder. And wondering has a way of becoming deciding."
"Let them wonder." She stood, her coffee untouched. "And Theodore? The next time you want to call me incompetent, do it to my face in front of a judge. You'll find I'm excellent company in a courtroom."
She left him sitting in the morning light with his folded newspaper, and she did not look back.
The hearing was set for Thursday in a courtroom that smelled of old wood and older paper. Susan Park stood at the petitioner's table with Ada Kowalski's sworn statement in a folder and a spine of straight steel.
Lang's lawyer rose first, all sympathy and procedure. "Your Honor, these records have been sealed for twenty-three years. My client is a retired physician entitled to his privacy, and the petitioner offers nothing but the confused recollection of an elderly woman."
Susan stood. "Your Honor, the seal was meant to protect patients, not to bury them. We have a sworn statement from the attending nurse that a living child was recorded as dead on the night in question. We have a DNA result showing the petitioner is that child's mother. The seal is not shielding privacy. It is shielding fraud."
The judge read the statement twice. The courtroom clock ticked loud enough to hear.
"Motion granted," the judge said at last. "Dr. Lang's sealed records from Saint Anne's Hospital for the night in question will be produced to petitioner's counsel within seventy-two hours."
Susan was already dialing before she reached the courthouse steps. "Catherine? We won. The order is signed."
Catherine closed her eyes. In her palm the locket sat warm from her hand, and inside it the faded newborn waited with its tiny heart-shaped mark.
"Then we open the box," she said.
Hope had teeth now.
Chapter 11: The Second File
The box arrived at the townhouse on a Tuesday morning, delivered by a courier who required a signature and an ID, as if it were something precious instead of something poisonous. It sat on the kitchen table, plain and unremarkable.
Susan arrived twenty minutes later, broke the tape, and lifted out two sealed envelopes stamped by the clerk of the court. Beneath them lay a thinner packet, unmarked, the color of old Manila.
She slit the first envelope with a letter opener.
"Two birth records," she said, laying them side by side. "Baby A. Female. Born 11:42 p.m., Saint Anne's Hospital, October twenty-seventh, twenty-three years ago. Mother: Catherine Marlowe. Father: Theodore Marlowe." She paused. "Stamped DECEASED. Cause listed as nursery fire."
Catherine's hand found the edge of the table and held it.
"Baby B," Susan continued. "Female. Born 11:47 p.m. Same hospital, same parents." Her voice flattened. "Stamped DECEASED. Cause listed as nursery fire."
"I was told I had one daughter," Catherine said, and her voice sounded very far away. "One baby. One grave. I buried an empty casket, and for twenty-three years I carried that locket like a fool because I believed them."
Susan reached for the second envelope, broke the seal, and drew out a single folded sheet.
"What is it?" Catherine asked.
"A death certificate. One death certificate." Susan unfolded it. "For Baby A only. Filed eleven days after the fire." She looked up. "There is no death certificate for Baby B, Catherine. Baby B has a birth record stamped deceased and no certificate of death."
"Then where did Baby B go?" Catherine whispered.
Susan reached for the thin unmarked packet at the bottom of the box. It was not sealed. It had no stamp, no letterhead, nothing but a handwritten label across the front in ink faded to brown.
THE OTHER CHILD'S RECORD.
"Open it," Catherine said.
Susan slid out the contents: three sheets of paper and a photograph. The photograph was clipped to the first sheet, and it slipped free when she tilted the packet, spinning once before landing face up on the table between them.
A girl. Five, perhaps six, posed for a school portrait against a gray backdrop. She wore a navy sweater, and her hair was pulled back in a way that did not suit her. She smiled the polite, practiced smile of a child told to smile.