Chapter 3

I stood in the hallway outside Fern’s apartment for a long time. The oxygen concentrator hummed behind the door. Through the gap under it, I could see a strip of light and the shadow of her feet. She didn’t walk away. She waited, the way people wait when they’ve already decided not to say more.

I could have knocked again. I could have called through the door. I could have told her I had the twin card and that I had grieved a dead baby while she taught him to zip a backpack three miles away.

But I had seen the twin bed through the doorway before she shut it. A folded blanket at the foot. A green plastic whistle on the nightstand. A boy’s room.

If I pounded on the door, I would wake him. I didn’t know what he knew. I didn’t know what name he called her. I didn’t know if he thought his mother died when he was born.

So I left.

I drove to Verna’s house on Third. My mother’s porch light was off, but her kitchen light was on. She was at the table with a cup of tea and a stack of church envelopes. She was sixty-three, straight-backed, silver hair pinned neat. She looked up when I came in without knocking.

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” she said.

“Fern Lattimore lives above the bait shop on Harbor Street.”

Verna set her cup down. She did not blink.

“She’s your sister,” I said. “My son is in her house.”

“Sit down, Halle.”

“No.”

“Then stand.” She folded her hands. “You’re upset. You’ve been upset for nine years. That doesn’t mean you get to tear through people’s lives.”

“Where is my son’s death certificate?”

The question landed in the kitchen like a plate. Verna looked at me with something almost like sympathy. “There isn’t one.”

“You told me he was stillborn.”

“I told you what you needed to hear.”

I took a step toward the table. My voice came out low. “What did I need to hear?”

“That it was over.” She stood. “You were twenty-three, septic, high on morphine, and pregnant by a man who was already gone. The state was already sniffing around. The baby had drugs in his system from the crash medication. They were going to take him. Fern took him instead. She raised him. He has a home. He has a school. He has a name.”

“He has my name.”

“He has Reeder,” Verna said. “Fern’s husband’s name. That was the point.”

I thought of Amos’s closed face. The way he thanked me twice. The way he didn’t flinch.

“You stole him.”

“I saved him.” Verna went to the drawer beside the stove and took out a manila folder. She laid it on the table. “This is what saved him.”

I opened it. A carbon copy of a voluntary kinship consent. My signature at the bottom. A notary stamp. The date was three days after he was born.

The notary block was my mother’s.

“I don’t remember signing this.”

“You were on a morphine drip.”

“I don’t remember signing this.”

“Then you don’t remember a lot.” Verna’s voice was quiet. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

I stared at the signature. It looked like mine. A little shaky, but mine. My hand. Or a copy of it. I did not know. That was the worst part. I did not know.

“Fern took him,” Verna said. “I only wrote the story afterward. I paid her to keep him safe. I have paid her every month for nine years.”

“You paid her.”

“Four hundred dollars a month. Money orders. I kept the stubs.”

I felt sick. “You bought my son.”

“I bought his silence,” Verna said. “And mine.”