Chapter 5 - The Birthday Party Alibi
Hannah showed the anonymous photograph to Amelia the next morning, resisting the impulse to call the number while the lawyer worked to establish its origin without alerting the sender.
The picture appeared to have been copied from an old newspaper archive, and a date stamped on the back placed Vivian and Conrad outside Saint Agnes three days after Hannah's birth.
A headline from the same issue reported that the hospital's charitable adoption wing had received a large private donation, though the donor's identity was listed only as a family foundation.
Hannah felt a cold pressure in her chest at the words charitable adoption, because charity had so often been the polite language wealthy people used when they wanted their power to look like kindness.
Amelia found a small note in the original article referring to two newborn transfers during that week, but no further public information identifying either child.
Before they could investigate further, Brent appeared on morning television alongside Vivian, granting a carefully staged interview outside the venue that had hosted her birthday.
Vivian spoke with shaking lips about the family's concern for Hannah, describing the birth as a joyous event now overshadowed by a malicious effort to embarrass her son.
Brent claimed he had believed Hannah was experiencing ordinary discomfort when she called, then accused Gideon of exploiting a vulnerable postpartum woman to retaliate against a loyal employee.
“He has resources we can't compete with,” Brent told the camera. “I just want my wife and child to come home.”
Hannah watched the interview with the sound low so Noah would not wake, her anger turning into disbelief when a photograph of her pregnant at a company gala appeared on screen without her consent.
Vivian then produced a framed baby blanket she called her grandson's first gift, as if a carefully purchased object could substitute for the presence she had denied his mother.
Amelia advised against a public response while they assembled accurate records; the strongest answer, she said, would come from Hannah's own decisions rather than a contest of press releases.
Gideon agreed, issuing only a company statement confirming that a routine internal inquiry was underway and declining to discuss Hannah's private medical or family circumstances.
The restraint frustrated reporters but spared Hannah from being reduced to a pawn in the war between a wealthy employer and his subordinate.
At the cottage that afternoon, Hannah stood beneath a low ceiling and watched Noah sleeping in a borrowed bassinet, grateful for the ordinary hum of a dishwasher she could control herself.
Margaret Mercer had raised her in a rented duplex over a bakery, where flour drifted through the window screens on summer mornings and none of the furniture matched.
Hannah had once been embarrassed by the faded curtains when classmates visited, but suddenly those rooms seemed grander than Brent's mansion because she had never been afraid to cry in them.
She unpacked Margaret's photograph and placed it beside the kettle, then opened the folder of old papers she had brought from the house before her final prenatal appointment.
Among vaccination cards and school certificates was an envelope addressed in Margaret's handwriting to “Hannah, when you're ready to look backward.”
Hannah remembered finding it after Margaret's funeral and closing it again when marriage and work gave her a convenient reason to avoid grief.
Inside were copies of adoption-agency correspondence, a page describing an infant called Elizabeth R., and a handwritten note stating that Hannah had once arrived with another baby's hospital bracelet in her blanket.
Margaret had written that the bracelet was preserved at a local historical records center after the agency refused to accept it as evidence of a clerical error.
Hannah called Amelia, her pulse quickening at the words another baby's bracelet, and together they compared the initials on the note with the anonymous photograph's warning.
The agency had managed placements for multiple infants in the early 1990s, and no responsible investigator could assume two children were related simply because their files passed through the same institution.
But the note offered a possible path toward identifying who had known about the transfer and whether another family had been deceived.
Meanwhile, Brent's public performance began to collapse under questions from guests who had actually attended Vivian's party.
One woman remembered the moment his phone rang and told reporters he had announced, laughing, that Hannah was “trying to steal Mom's night again.”
A waiter later confirmed that Brent remained at the celebration for nearly two hours after the call, long enough to help Vivian cut her cake and pose beside a wall of expensive flowers.
Hannah disliked seeing strangers dissect the worst night of her life, but she could no longer pretend Brent's abandonment had arisen from confusion.
When Brent called her private number from an unfamiliar phone, she answered only after asking Amelia to join by conference and announcing that the conversation would be documented with consent.
He began with apologies, then slipped into resentment when she refused to tell him the cottage's address, accusing her of letting Gideon turn a marriage into a financial negotiation.
“Did your mother know about my adoption before we met?” Hannah asked, cutting through his rehearsed speech.
Brent fell silent so abruptly that she could hear a clock ticking somewhere behind him.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” he finally answered, but the denial sounded borrowed rather than spontaneous.
“Then tell her I found Vivian Hart's signature on a hospital transfer,” Hannah said. “Tell her the next conversation happens with lawyers.”
Brent hung up, and Hannah stared at the blank screen without trembling this time, amazed by the difference between being frightened of someone's anger and allowing it to govern her choices.
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Within an hour Amelia learned the anonymous photograph had been sent from a public-library computer in Bridgeport, where a former Saint Agnes records clerk had recently registered for a legal-aid appointment.
The woman's name was Ruth Pritchard, and her appointment request contained a haunting phrase: “I know what happened to the second infant, and I'm tired of being afraid.”
