Chapter 8 - The First Mother
Mae had vanished without a sound.
On the floor near the open door lay her cracked phone.
Leah started toward the road.
Simone grabbed her. “You have a newborn strapped to you.”
“They took Mae because of me.”
“They took Mae because she knows something.”
Ruth locked the door and pulled down the blinds.
Simone searched Mae’s phone. One recent message had been sent to a contact named CARLA W.
If anything happens to me, tell her the truth is in Locker 214.
“Who is Carla?” Leah asked.
Simone’s face went still.
“The first mother in my investigation.”
They met Carla two hours later in the back room of a closed hair salon.
Carla Winters was thirty-two, thin, and carried grief like a second spine.
“My daughter was born at Briar Glen seven years ago,” she said. “I had a panic attack after delivery. They called it psychosis.”
“What happened to your baby?” Leah asked.
“They said temporary protective placement.” Carla’s mouth trembled. “Then they said there had been complications. Then they said she died.”
Leah felt cold.
“But you don’t believe them.”
Carla opened an envelope.
Inside was a photograph taken at a charity picnic three years earlier.
Doreen stood smiling beside a little girl with dark curls.
Carla tapped the girl’s face.
“That is my daughter.”
Simone whispered, “How do you know?”
“She has the same birthmark. Left shoulder. Shape of a crescent.”
Carla slid another paper across the table.
It was a donor roster for the Carver Family Foundation.
One name appeared beside a large annual contribution.
Briar Glen Maternity Pavilion.
Leah stared at it.
“What is Locker 214?”
Carla looked at Simone.
“Union Station. Mae has kept copies for years. Patient charts. adoption transfers. security footage. Names.”
“Enough to stop them?”
“Enough to bury them.”
A shadow crossed the salon’s frosted front window.
Then another.
Carla’s face drained.
“They found us.”
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Carla had spent years being told grief had damaged her memory. Doctors said the birthmark might be coincidence. Lawyers told her the sealed records were lawful. Even friends eventually asked whether searching was keeping her from healing. "They made persistence sound like sickness," she told Leah. "That's how they win. They hurt you, then call your reaction proof that you're unstable." Leah reached across the table and squeezed her hand. For the first time since the supply room, fear became something else: anger with direction.
The front glass shattered.
