Chapter 2 - The Black Bag
Nicole moved first.
She reached for the documents.
Evan stepped between us.
“Back up.”
“Those are mine.”
I held the folder against my chest.
“Then tell me why my daughter’s birth hospital is on them.”
Nicole’s eyes flashed.
“You don't understand what you’re reading.”
“Then explain it.”
Diane came closer.
“Rachel, give me the bag.”
“No.”
“Now.”
Something about her tone took me backward twenty years.
I was eleven.
Nicole sixteen.
Nicole broke the dining room window during an argument and Diane made me apologize because I had “provoked her.”
Nicole crashed Frank’s car at nineteen and I was told not to mention alcohol because “family protects family.”
Nicole borrowed six thousand dollars from me at twenty-eight and never repaid it.
Diane said sisters did not keep score.
Except Diane kept score every day.
Nicole always won.
I held the folder tighter.
“What is Baby Girl Carter B?”
Frank whispered:
“Rachel.”
I turned.
His eyes were wet.
My heart began pounding.
“What?”
“Maybe we should go inside.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
Nicole suddenly reached around Evan and grabbed Lily by the upper arm.
Lily screamed.
I moved before thought.
I knocked Nicole’s hand away and shoved her backward.
“Do not touch her.”
Nicole stumbled into a stack of cardboard boxes.
Diane slapped me.
The crack was loud enough to silence the caterers ten yards away.
Evan caught my shoulders before I lunged.
“Rachel.”
I looked at my mother.
She looked almost pleased.
“There,” Diane said. “This is exactly why nobody tells you anything.”
My blood turned cold.
“Nobody tells me what?”
Silence.
Lily cried into Evan’s jacket.
Nicole touched her lip where she had bitten it when falling.
Then smiled.
“You always thought you were the good mother.”
I stepped toward her.
Evan stopped me gently.
“Police are coming.”
Nicole’s smile vanished.
“What?”
He held up his phone.
“I called when I heard Lily was locked in a container.”
Frank swore under his breath.
Diane hissed:
“You had no right.”
Evan looked at her.
“A four-year-old was confined against her will. I had every right to call.”
Then Nicole lunged toward the bag again.
The torn plastic caught on a box.
More papers spilled.
One bottle.
Two sealed specimen labels.
A photocopy of something that looked like a guardianship form.
And a photograph.
A little girl sitting on a hospital bed.
The child’s face was turned partly away.
Dark blond hair.
Small shoulders.
A yellow blanket.
Something about her profile made my chest hurt.
I crouched.
Nicole stepped on the photograph.
I looked at her shoe.
Then at her.
“Move.”
“No.”
“Nicole.”
“Drop it.”
Evan moved forward.
She finally lifted her heel.
I pulled the picture free.
On the back:
S. LANE
AGE 3
FOLLOW-UP
“Who is S. Lane?”
Frank turned away.
Police sirens sounded from the road.
Diane whispered:
“You’ve destroyed everything.”
I looked at her.
“I haven't done anything.”
“Yes, you have.”
“What?”
“You opened the bag.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Not Nicole locked Lily away.
Not someone hid medical records.
Not somebody had paperwork connected to my supposedly dead baby.
My crime was opening the bag.
Officers arrived.
The first officer separated everyone immediately.
Lily remained with me and Evan.
Nicole began explaining before anyone asked:
“It was just a timeout.”
Diane:
“Rachel attacked us.”
Frank said nothing.
The officer looked at Lily.
Then the storage trunk.
Then the strap.
Then my bruised cheek.
Then the scattered documents.
Another officer called for a child welfare investigator and evidence technician.
I handed over the folder.
My fingers did not want to release it.
The officer promised:
“We’ll document everything.”
Nicole snapped:
“Those are private medical records.”
“Yes,” the officer said. “Which is one reason we need to know why they were in a garbage bag behind an event tent.”
Good.
Then a paramedic checked Lily.
No serious injury.
Some scalp tenderness where Nicole had pulled her hair.
A faint mark on her arm.
Nothing requiring hospitalization.
I almost collapsed from relief.
Then Lily whispered:
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“The girl in the picture looks like me.”
I looked again.
She did.
Not exactly.
But enough.
I had always been told twins could look alike even when one did not survive.
My second daughter.
The baby I named Sophie during pregnancy.
I had never seen her awake.
I had been told she lived forty-three minutes after an emergency delivery.
No funeral.
Diane handled everything while I recovered.
She told me seeing the baby would “destroy me.”
I had believed her.
A police evidence technician lifted the photocopied guardianship form using gloves.
He read the heading.
TEMPORARY MEDICAL GUARDIAN AUTHORIZATION.
Child:
Sophie Carter.
Mother:
Rachel Carter.
Authorized caregiver:
Diane Carter.
My signature appeared at the bottom.
I stared.
“I never signed that.”
Frank made a small sound behind me.
The officer looked up.
“You’re sure?”
“I would remember giving my mother guardianship over the daughter I was told was dead.”
Nobody spoke.
May you like
Then Frank sat down hard on a folding chair.
And for the first time, my father started crying.
