Chapter 18: What Haley Signed

I sat Haley at Hattie's table and put a towel around her shoulders.

Emmett took the porch, with the door open a hand's width.

I did not offer her tea.

She laid the folder down and slid it across to me.

"Read the top one," she said.

It was a page of nurse's notes in neat type, dated for the last three weeks.

Mrs. Wexler found weeping in the nursery, infant unattended on the bed.

Mrs. Wexler stated she "could not keep going."

Mrs. Wexler declined to eat, declined to hold the baby, declined help.

At the bottom was a line for a signature, and under it a printed name.

Haley Merritt, RN.

"None of it happened," I said.

"No."

"Who wrote it?"

"Ward's mother. At her desk, tonight, with her glasses on." Haley's mouth shook.

"She said I'd sign every page and back-date it. That was the price of my license."

"Why does she have your license?"

"Nine years ago, I took her check." She said it flatly. "Forty thousand dollars."

"You were twenty-one."

"I was in a group home. I'd been told since I was six that there wasn't any money for me."

She swallowed.

"She put that check in my hand, and I thought, well, that's what it costs."

"To leave Ward."

"To leave my own life. I changed schools. I worked nights."

"And then Ward found you."

"He came to the clinic crying, and he said he needed someone he could trust."

"And you said yes."

"I thought he'd come looking for me." She looked at her hands.

"I was wrong. He'd come looking for a donor."