Chapter 6
The second supervised visit was scheduled for Saturday morning, but by Wednesday I was sitting on the floor of my apartment with three photocopied hospital inventories spread around me.
The pages smelled faintly of dust and toner. Rachel had requested them from the hospital's records department after the court allowed the investigation to continue. Each inventory listed the ordinary things assigned to room 204 during the disruption: a gray blanket, two feeding bottles, a plastic basin, a patient's robe, and a small personal-effects envelope marked with my name.
The envelope had been crossed out in blue ink.
I leaned closer. Beneath the line, someone had written, in a different hand, “Transferred with infant belongings.”
My fingers went cold.
“Infant belongings” could have meant anything. A blanket. A photograph. The half-locket I had never found. But I knew what had been beside Lucy's bassinet that night. I had written the lullaby on a cream-colored card because I was afraid I would forget the words while I was exhausted and afraid. The card had a crooked blue border and one sentence on the back: Sing this when she can't settle.
It had disappeared with Lucy.
I called Rachel, and she answered on the second ring.
“Don't decide what it proves yet,” she said after I explained. “Send me a scan. I'll send it to Ortiz.”
“I know what it was.”
“You know what you remember. That's important. It's not the same as evidence.”
I hated that she was right. I scanned the page and sent it anyway.
Ortiz called before dinner. She had found an older photograph in the original evidence archive, one that had never been attached to the report because the film envelope had been misfiled. She met me at the Harbor Diner office with a plastic sleeve in her hand.
The photograph showed room 204 before the disruption. The image was grainy, the bassinet pushed close to the window, but the cream-colored card was visible beside the folded blanket. Its blue border showed clearly enough.
I stared at it until the edges blurred.
“That establishes the card was there,” Ortiz said. “It doesn't establish who took it.”
“No,” I said. “But it was taken with Lucy.”
Ortiz did not argue. She turned the photograph over. On the back, a hospital aide had written the time and the initials of the person who took it. The initials belonged to no one we had identified yet.
The next morning, Rachel told me Mara's attorney had acknowledged that Mara possessed the card. He claimed Mara received Lucy and the belongings from an unnamed intermediary during the hospital confusion.
An intermediary.
The word sat between us like another locked door.
“She gave it to Mara?” I asked.
“That is his client's account,” Rachel said. “We need to test it before calling it a lie.”
I wanted to post the photograph everywhere. I wanted strangers to see the proof and decide for me. Instead, I gave Ortiz permission to compare the handwriting, check hospital access logs, and trace every person assigned near room 204. Mara's story deserved scrutiny, even if believing it made my stomach turn.
That evening, Noah spread diner receipts across his office desk. He drew a line through the dates and placed the photograph, the inventory, and my old hospital statement in order.
“You're sure this is the night?” he asked.
“I've been sure of the night for four years.”
He looked at me, not the papers. “I meant whether you're ready to let the evidence say what it says, even if it takes longer than you want.”
The question should have annoyed me. Instead, it steadied me.
Rain tapped against the office window. His shoulder brushed mine when he reached for another receipt. For one quiet second, the investigation fell away, and I imagined what it might feel like to have someone beside me for reasons that weren't connected to Lucy's disappearance.
I pulled back.
Noah lowered his hand. “Did I do something?”
May you like
“No.” I gathered the receipts into a neat stack. “That's the problem.”
He accepted the answer without asking me to explain it. I left with the lullaby card's image in my mind and the knowledge that it linked Mara to what had been taken from room 204. It also left one question alive: who, exactly, had placed Lucy and her belongings in Mara's hands?
