“In my grief, and a medication-induced state, I made a decision that has haunted every hour of my existence. In the nursery ward, I found another infant. A baby girl with no visitors, no flowers by her bassinet, no name on her wristband except Baby Girl Thornton.”
Marcus was staring at me now. But it wasn’t the look of a brother realizing his sister was a victim. It was the look of a man realizing he’d been sharing his silver spoons with a common thief.
“The mother had died in childbirth,” Mr. Whitmore read, the words falling like lead weights. “The father was unknown. I took her. I switched the wristbands. I left the hospital with someone else’s child and told myself I was giving her a better life. But every time I looked at her, I saw my sin. I saw the child I lost. Sarah, you were never meant to be a Callahan. You were a replacement. And replacements are never the same as the original.”
I looked at the clock on the wall. Tick. Tick. Tick. Outside, a car horn blared in the mundane world of Brentwood, oblivious to the fact that my entire identity had just been incinerated.
“This is a joke,” Vanessa hissed, standing up so abruptly her chair screeched against the hardwood. “This is a sick, demented joke! She was losing her mind at the end! The dementia, the paranoia—”
“Your mother was perfectly lucid, Miss Callahan,” Mr. Whitmore interrupted, his voice like iron. “She had three independent psychiatric evaluations before signing this. She wanted the truth to be the last thing you ever heard from her.”
He looked at me, his eyes softening just a fraction. “And there is more.”
But as I stared at the manila envelope he held out, I realized the nightmare was only beginning.
