Chapter 1 - THE PINK RIBBON
Victoria Hayes had learned to recognize a threat by the way security moved before anyone explained what was happening. On the red carpet outside the Belmore Theatre, the flashes were so bright she could barely distinguish individual faces beyond the velvet ropes. She was halfway through an interview about her latest film when a small girl in a worn jacket slipped between two reporters and ran toward her. Victoria turned, saw the child reaching for her and reacted with the impatience that would dominate every headline by morning. “Don’t let that girl come near me.”
The guard stepped between them. The girl stopped so abruptly that one of her shoes slid against the carpet, but she did not retreat. Her brown hair was tangled, her dress looked several years old, and she was trying very hard not to cry. Victoria turned back toward the cameras, already preparing the apologetic smile that publicists taught actors to wear whenever an interruption threatened the evening’s photographs. Then she heard the child say, “Please. My mom said you’d know this.”
Victoria glanced over her shoulder. The girl had pushed up her jacket sleeve and was holding out her wrist. Around it hung an old hospital identification bracelet, too large for an eight-year-old, secured with a faded pink ribbon. The plastic was yellowed and one edge had cracked. Victoria was about to tell the guard to find the child’s parent when she saw the handwriting beneath the printed identification.
MY LITTLE NORTH STAR. — V.
She stopped smiling.
There were thousands of hospital bracelets in the world and probably just as many mothers who called their children stars. But Victoria knew the shape of that capital N. She had written those words in purple ink while lying in a recovery bed eight years earlier, terrified that the staff would move her newborn again before she could hold her properly. The pink ribbon had come from the small gift bag her mother prepared before dying. Victoria tied it around the bracelet because she wanted one unmistakable object belonging to her daughter.
“Wait,” she said.
The guard looked toward her. Victoria walked past him and held out her hand. “Let me see that.” The little girl extended her wrist without moving closer. Under the bright camera lights, Victoria recognized the abbreviated hospital name, the birth date and the final three digits of the identification number. She had memorized that number during the five days she spent trying to learn where her baby had been taken.
“I wrote those words myself,” Victoria whispered.
The girl’s eyes filled. “My mom said you’d recognize it.”
Victoria lowered herself to one knee, barely aware that reporters were calling questions from behind her. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Lily.”
The name struck Victoria almost as hard as the bracelet. She had named her daughter Lily after her own mother, then spent years being told that the name had probably been changed when the child entered permanent placement. She had searched private adoption records, petitioned for access to sealed documents and hired investigators who brought her nothing but invoices.
“My daughter was taken away,” she said, struggling to make her voice work. “They told me I couldn’t see her.”
Lily studied her face. Whatever the girl expected to find, it was clearly not a woman shaking beneath the cameras.
“Then why did my mom say you abandoned me?”
Victoria did not answer because the question contained two different losses. Someone had taken a child from her, and that child had grown up believing she had been unwanted. Beyond the velvet rope, a woman in a gray cardigan pushed through the crowd, calling Lily’s name. She reached the guard just as Victoria stood.
“That’s my daughter,” the woman said.
Victoria turned.
The woman looked exhausted, frightened and unmistakably determined. She was about forty, with dark hair pulled back carelessly and a canvas bag slipping from one shoulder. Her eyes went to the bracelet still resting between Victoria’s fingers.
“My name is Mara Bennett,” she said. “I’m the mother who raised her.”
Victoria looked at Lily, who moved instinctively toward Mara. It was a small movement, but Victoria understood it. This woman had been there when Lily was sick, hungry and afraid. Biology would not erase eight years of ordinary care.
“Where did you get her?” Victoria asked.
Mara flinched. “I adopted her.”
“From whom?”
Mara reached inside the canvas bag and removed a worn document envelope. “That’s why I brought her here. I tried your agency. I tried your lawyers. Nobody would let me speak to you.”
Victoria barely heard her. On the front of the envelope was a logo she had not seen in years: a silver lighthouse inside a blue circle.
Bright Harbor Family Services.
The private agency that had arranged her daughter’s removal.
The organization sponsoring tonight’s charity premiere.
Victoria looked back toward the theatre entrance. Above the doors, a giant illuminated banner welcomed donors to the Bright Harbor Children’s Fund annual gala.
May you like
For eight years she had been told Bright Harbor helped find her daughter a safe home.
Tonight, a little girl wearing the original hospital bracelet had walked through the organization’s own red carpet and asked why Victoria left her.
