Chapter 14 - The Birth Certificate
Certified birth records arrived two hours later.
Grace read the original first.
Mother: Grace Elise Bennett.
Father: Not listed.
Then Maya opened an amended version filed three weeks after Lily's birth.
Mother: Unknown pending guardianship review.
Grace's hands began to shake.
"I never signed that."
The amendment referenced a sealed neonatal protective order.
The court file number existed.
The file itself had vanished.
Nathan paced the room.
"Who filed the amendment?"
Maya checked.
"Charles Mercer."
Nathan stopped.
Charles had disappeared after their confrontation.
Police had found his car at Newark Airport, but no record of him boarding a flight.
Grace suddenly remembered a hospital social worker who visited after Lily's birth.
"Patricia Hale."
Elias searched.
Former hospital social worker.
Current director of a private child-placement foundation.
Major donor: Vance Family Charities.
Police searched her apartment.
She was gone.
In a locked desk they found copies of sealed infant records.
Lily's was one.
Attached was an unsigned guardianship transfer.
Proposed guardian: Victoria Anne Vance.
Grace stared at it.
"She wanted my baby?"
Eleanor covered her mouth.
Maya read the date.
"This was drafted before Lily was born."
The plan had never been only to hide the child.
If Grace became difficult, they had prepared to take Lily.
Elias's laptop chimed.
A toll camera had captured Patricia's car entering Pennsylvania.
There was a passenger.
Charles Mercer.
Then Nathan's phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
If you want the original birth file, come without police.
An address followed.
Grace recognized it immediately.
"The maternity clinic."
The same private clinic where Lily had been born.
The building had closed two years earlier.
Nathan looked at Grace.
"I'll go."
"No."
"Grace--"
"No more men deciding what happens in my daughter's story."
She took the phone from his hand.
"If that file proves they forged her identity, I'm going too."
Nathan wanted to argue.
May you like
Instead he nodded.
Because he was finally learning the difference between protecting Grace and controlling her.
