A Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Chapter 02 - A Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Mallerie did not sleep. At six in the morning she took the blue city bus to St. Agnes Memorial, where she had given birth, and found the admissions desk staffed by a woman chewing gum with the determination of someone preparing for a long shift.
“I need my delivery records,” Mallerie said.
The clerk looked at her ID, entered the name, frowned, and entered it again. “You'll have to speak to medical records.”
“I've already requested them twice.”
“Then you know the process.”
“I was told my child died. Yesterday I saw a boy who may be my son.”
The woman's gum stopped moving. Her eyes softened for a moment, then returned to the screen. She printed a form, turned it toward Mallerie, and pointed to a box near the bottom. “Request the complete chart. Not the summary.”
It was the first useful thing anyone had said to her in months.
When she got back to the servants' entrance at the Vale mansion, the head housekeeper, Mrs. Larkin, was waiting with an envelope. Mallerie's final wages were inside, along with a typed notice explaining that her employment had been terminated due to a breach of guest confidentiality.
“I'm sorry,” Mrs. Larkin said.
“Did Mr. Vale sign it?”
“Mr. Vale doesn't sign staff notices.”
“Who does?”
Mrs. Larkin folded the envelope in Mallerie's hand. “Go home, child. This is not the sort of house where a woman gets to win a disagreement.”
Mallerie lived above a dry cleaner's on West Twenty-Third Street, in a room with an unreliable radiator and a window that faced a brick wall. At eleven, someone knocked twice and once more after a short pause. A stranger stood outside, a woman about sixty in a gray coat carrying a paper sack.
“I'm Ruth Bell,” she said. “I worked at St. Agnes for nineteen years.”
The woman let herself in only after Mallerie stepped aside. She put the sack on the table. There was bread inside, two oranges, and an old photograph of a newborn child wearing a striped hospital cap.
“Your baby wasn't pronounced dead in the delivery room,” Ruth said.
Mallerie held the back of a chair. “How do you know?”
“I was the recovery nurse. You kept asking for him. They gave you something to make you sleep.”
“Who gave it?”
“Doctor Brennan signed the order. A woman from administration brought the medication. She didn't belong on the ward.”
Mallerie remembered the blurred face of a nurse leaning over her, a soft assurance that her child had gone to a better place. “Why are you coming now?”
“Because I saw your face on a staff photograph sent to the mansion this morning. My niece works for the catering company. The woman who sent the picture asked whether we recognized you.”
“Who asked?”
Ruth tapped the photograph. “Celeste Harrow. She also sits on the hospital's charitable board.”
The room grew very small.
Ruth told her that Owen had been delivered alive and had cried before being taken to neonatal care. When Ruth returned from lunch, his wristband number had been changed on the transfer sheet. The original chart disappeared. She had reported the discrepancy to a supervisor, who told her that she was confusing two infants. Within a month, her hours had been reduced; she resigned before the year ended.
“I kept this photograph,” Ruth said. “I didn't know why. Perhaps because I saw you kiss the child's ankle before they wheeled him away.”
Mallerie turned the picture over. In Ruth's handwriting were a date, a time, and the initials O.K. She sat down. It was not proof of anything, but it was more than she had been permitted to keep.
“You should go to the police,” Ruth said.
“I did. In January. They told me the hospital had documented a stillbirth.”
Ruth made a short, unkind sound. “A stillbirth doesn't cry.”
By late afternoon an attorney called on Gideon's behalf. He introduced himself as Samuel Pierce and asked if Mallerie would come to an office in Midtown, where he assured her that she would be treated fairly. Mallerie said she would bring a lawyer of her own. She didn't have one, but the silence that followed told her it was the right answer.
At seven, Gideon came in person. He wore no tie, and the strain around his eyes made him look older than he had at the engagement party. His driver waited downstairs. Gideon climbed the three flights alone.
“I didn't fire you,” he said before she could speak.
“That's not the first thing I want to know.”
“I've asked for the adoption file.”
“And?”
“My lawyer says it can't be located.”
She almost laughed. “A billionaire misplaces the papers for his son?”
Gideon accepted the blow. “I deserve that. But I didn't know about you.”
“You knew there was a mother.”
“Yes.”
“What did they say happened to her?”
He looked at the striped cap in the photograph she held. “That she had died during childbirth.”
Mallerie studied him. Gideon Vale had done things she knew better than to ask about. Yet something in the way he stood in her shabby kitchen suggested an unpleasant discovery: power was less useful than he'd believed.
“Why adopt a baby at forty-eight?” she asked.
His answer came slowly. “My sister, Elena, died fifteen years ago. She wanted children. I thought I could do one decent thing with the life I had.”
“Did Celeste arrange it?”
“Yes.”
“And you're marrying her?”
“I was.”
He left a card on her table. On the back was a private telephone number, written in his own hand. “I will have Owen tested. You can choose your doctor, and you'll be present. No one will touch him without your approval.”
“Can I see him?”
Gideon looked down. “Celeste took him to her mother's house this morning. She says it's safer there.”
Mallerie rose so fast the chair tipped backward. “You let her take him?”
“My staff is getting the address.”
May you like
She was already reaching for her coat when his telephone rang. He listened without speaking. Then he turned toward her.
“The house is empty,” he said. “And Celeste's mother died eight years ago.”
