The Second V.B.
Chapter 09 - The Second V.B.
The name on the roster was Vivian Brooks, the night supervisor of the maternal ward. She had retired to a small town near Rockford and spent her mornings volunteering at an animal shelter. The investigator found her there, in a room full of barking terriers, wearing an old sweatshirt and refusing to answer questions until she had finished cleaning a kennel.
When Vivian arrived at Judith's office two days later, Rachel felt a bitter disappointment. She had wanted the initials to belong to Vanessa. She had wanted the story to end neatly, with an evil woman exposed and a child restored. Vivian was sixty-three, red-eyed and heavyset, with arthritis in her hands. Nothing about her suggested a woman who could ruin lives with a pen stroke.
"I approved a transfer," Vivian said. "Not an adoption. A transfer from intensive care to the private neonatal ward. The baby was in trouble, and the unit was short-staffed. Dr. Vale told me there was a specialist waiting upstairs."
"Did you see the child again?" Judith asked.
Vivian shook her head. "When I checked the system later, the record was closed. The death certificate had been entered under Dr. Vale's credentials. I asked her about it. She told me the baby had died during transfer. I didn't question her because I was afraid of what it would mean if I had sent a living baby upstairs without the mother's permission."
Rachel looked at the woman's hands. They were swollen at the knuckles, the kind of hands that had washed thousands of babies. "Do you know what my husband and I were told?"
"Yes." Vivian's voice faltered. "I read about you this week. I know you don't owe me forgiveness."
"I don't," Rachel said. "But you can tell the truth now. Even if it embarrasses you. Even if you lose something."
Vivian agreed to give a statement and surrender her private notebook from that year. She had written down the time of the transfer and the name of the porter who moved the bassinet: Maurice Pike. Rachel recognized it at once. Maurice was the contractor whose car Daniel had serviced, the man police were trying to locate after the collision.
The name stitched two parts of the story together. The stolen child and the attempt to frighten her father had not happened in separate worlds. The same man had moved through both.
On the drive home from the interview Rachel noticed a woman outside a pharmacy struggling to fold a stroller while a little boy kept reaching for the open door. Rachel stopped to help her. Together they wrestled with a stubborn latch until it finally gave way. The woman thanked her and went on, complaining cheerfully that every piece of baby equipment seemed designed by someone who had never had a baby in one arm.
Rachel returned to her car and sat with both hands on the steering wheel. She had been looking at childhood as evidence—photographs, bracelets, vaccination dates, court reports. The stranger had reminded her that motherhood was also a long series of small practical inconveniences. Rachel wanted those too. She wanted to wipe a sticky face and lose a mitten and stand in the rain waiting for a bus. She wanted the unremarkable days she had been denied.
Police located Maurice that afternoon at a relative's apartment. Under questioning he admitted transporting a baby between floors on Dr. Vale's orders. Years later, when Daniel began asking questions, Maurice had been paid to follow him and report his movements. He denied intending to strike Daniel's car, but traffic camera footage and damage to his vehicle contradicted parts of his account. Investigators continued to examine who had directed him.
Luca arrived at Rachel's apartment that evening. He had stopped wearing his expensive watch. It was a small change, perhaps meaningless, but she noticed it. He stood awkwardly near the kitchen counter while Daniel lowered himself into a chair.
"I owe you both an apology," Luca said. "Not because I knew about the transfer. I didn't. Because I accepted assurances from Vanessa and her father about a hospital we were funding. I never asked to see the records behind the glossy reports. People suffered while I congratulated myself for doing good."
Daniel looked at him. "If you're looking for absolution, I'm not qualified to give it."
"I know." Luca placed a folder on the table. "The independent auditor found payments through the maternity fund to a consulting firm controlled by Vanessa. They total nearly nine hundred thousand dollars over three years. The consulting firm paid the adoption agency and Maurice Pike."
Rachel did not reach for the folder. "Have you given this to the police?"
"Yes. The foundation's lawyers are cooperating. And I've asked my mother to chair an independent panel on the patients affected, with no Moretti family votes on decisions about compensation."
"That won't give me the first sixteen months of my daughter's life."
"No," Luca said. "It won't."
She appreciated that he did not argue.
After he left, Rachel sat beside Daniel in the narrow kitchen. The refrigerator hummed. Someone upstairs moved furniture across a bare floor. Life continued in its clumsy, ordinary way while they tried to understand how much had been done to them.
"Do you think she planned it from the beginning?" Daniel asked.
"Vanessa? Perhaps. But there were so many people in the middle who could have stopped it. That's what keeps me awake."
Daniel covered her hand with his. "I should have told you about the money."
"Yes."
"I don't know how to be the man I was before."
"Maybe you shouldn't be," Rachel said. "Maybe neither of us should. We were so busy surviving that we stopped asking whether we were telling the truth."
He gave a small, pained smile. "You always make the hard things sound ordinary."
"They are ordinary. People lie at kitchen tables every day. That's how homes come apart."
The next morning Judith received a call from a former social worker who had handled Celeste's adoption. Her name was Laura Senn, and she had been living in a motel outside Milwaukee for almost a month. She claimed to have copies of emails showing Vanessa's involvement. But she would speak only if someone could guarantee her protection from Victor Bellini.
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Rachel had thought Victor was a distant father whose lawyers were protecting family wealth. Now his name was at the center of the threat. When Judith asked Laura why she feared him, Laura answered, "Because Vanessa didn't come up with the plan. She only found a way to profit from it."
The next document, Laura said, would show who had ordered Rachel's daughter to be declared dead.
