Mom Cooked Only for Bella, So I Found My Real Mother novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: No One Behind Her

Brenda stood up.

"It's a copy," she said. "Anyone can write a name on a copy."

"Brenda." Her sister didn't lift her eyes from the page. "I took that call."

"What call?"

"You phoned me at three in the morning. You said the baby was fine and her name was Virginia." Her voice shook. "I asked if I could come to the hospital. You told me not to, you were tired. You told me to wait until the afternoon."

"I was exhausted."

"I came at noon. You wouldn't let me hold her until the next day."

"You're being dramatic."

"I held her, and I said she had Mama's hair." The sister looked up, white to the lips. "Mama's hair was red. Yours was never red. I said it, and you went silent."

The room had gone very still.

"And I let it go," her sister said. "Because I wanted so badly for it to be nothing."

"It was nothing!"

"It was a baby."

She dropped the page on the coffee table as if it burned her.

"I stood up at that church supper because I couldn't believe you," she said. "I'm standing now because I do."

Brenda turned from face to face.

One of the lavender women lifted her chin.

"Brenda," she said. "I need to say something."

She was a small woman in her sixties with gray hair pinned up, and she had been holding the casserole dish in both hands since the doorway.

"I was the night nurse that night," she said.

Brenda's lips parted.

"Don't."

"I took my break at twelve-forty. The nursery was empty except for three babies. When I came back at one-thirty, one of the bassinets had a baby in it that wasn't breathing right, and the card had been moved."

"You told me you never noticed."

"I told you that because I was afraid it was my fault." Her eyes filled. "I was forty-six and I'd left the nursery alone. The charge nurse called it a clerical error and the baby in the grave was labeled Landry. I never knew what happened. I've wondered for eighteen years."

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