The date was two years before Chloe’s birth.
My stomach tightened.
“What is this?”
Eric closed his eyes.
“Rachel—”
“What is this?”
He sat down slowly.
Before Chloe, I had suffered what Eric and the doctors described as a late miscarriage.
I was nearly six months pregnant.
There was bleeding, an ambulance ride, surgery, and medication that blurred the next two days.
Eric told me the baby had not survived.
There was no funeral.
He said the hospital handled everything because the baby was too premature.
I had spent years grieving a daughter I never held.
“You told me she died,” I whispered.
Eric began crying.
“I believed she would.”
The room tilted.
“What does that mean?”
Our baby had been born alive.
She was extremely premature and transferred to a specialist hospital while I remained unconscious.
Eric was told she might suffer severe complications.
Terrified and financially overwhelmed, he contacted Vivian.
“She offered to help,” he said.
Vivian paid the medical costs and arranged accommodation near the specialist hospital.
Then Eric’s mother, Carol, intervened.
Carol had always considered me emotionally fragile. She persuaded Eric that raising a child with possible disabilities would destroy our marriage.
Without telling me, they discussed adoption.
“You gave away my baby while I was unconscious?”
“I was told she might never walk or speak.”
“So you gave her away?”
“I panicked!”
Chloe pushed away from the table.
“You let Mom believe her baby was dead?”
Eric covered his face.
“The adoption wasn’t finalized immediately. I planned to tell Rachel.”
“When?” I demanded.
“After you recovered.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
Vivian learned what happened several weeks later.
She tried to stop the adoption, but Eric threatened to prevent her from seeing me if she interfered.
Eventually, Sophie was adopted by a couple in another state.
Vivian never stopped searching for her.
“That was the third child,” Mia said. “Not Vivian’s biological daughter—her granddaughter.”
Chloe’s name appeared in the file because Vivian amended her will six months earlier.
She divided the seaside property equally among her two daughters and the granddaughter taken from one of them.
Me.
Mia.
And Sophie.
“Where is she?” I asked.
Mia looked toward the porch.
“She’s outside.”
A young woman stood beyond the screen door.
She appeared to be around 27, with short dark hair and a loose blue summer dress. She was beside Jamie, helping him untangle a kite string from the porch railing.
