Chapter 2 - TWO MOTHERS
Victoria’s publicist wanted her inside the theatre. The event director wanted the cameras redirected. Bright Harbor’s representatives wanted Mara and Lily escorted to a private room before reporters learned the child’s identity. Victoria ignored all three and asked her security chief, Daniel Ross, to find somewhere quiet where Lily could sit with Mara while independent counsel came to the theatre. She refused the event director’s offer of an upstairs hospitality suite because Bright Harbor controlled access to it.
They settled in a small production office behind the auditorium. Mara kept Lily beside her, one arm resting around the girl’s shoulders. Victoria sat opposite them, still wearing her champagne-colored gown. She had imagined meeting her daughter a thousand times, but none of those imagined meetings involved being a stranger whose every movement another mother watched for danger.
“Did you know who her birth mother was when you adopted her?” Victoria asked.
Mara nodded. “They told me you signed the relinquishment before she was discharged.”
“I didn’t.”
Mara looked toward Lily before answering. “That’s what I’m here to find out.”
The envelope contained a copy of a private adoption petition, an infant transfer summary and a notarized relinquishment bearing Victoria’s name. The documents stated that Victoria voluntarily agreed to placement after deciding she could not balance motherhood with her career. A supporting memorandum described her as “emotionally detached from the infant” and concerned about publicity.
Victoria felt heat climb her neck. During the week after Lily’s birth, she had been recovering from an emergency delivery and a severe infection. She was frightened and exhausted, but she had been asking for her baby continuously. She remembered calling her attorney from the hospital because staff refused to explain why Lily was no longer in the neonatal unit.
“Who told you I was emotionally detached?” she asked.
“A Bright Harbor social worker.”
“Name?”
“Diane Mercer.”
Victoria looked sharply at her. Diane had been the woman who told Victoria an emergency protective order temporarily barred contact with Lily until a family-court review. She had brought papers to the hospital and said refusing to cooperate could make permanent reunification more difficult.
The same woman had apparently told Mara that Victoria wanted no contact.
Mara opened a second folder. “I believed them for years. Then Lily turned seven and started asking whether you knew she was alive.” She glanced at the girl. “I told her the truth as I understood it. That you chose adoption and asked for privacy. I didn’t say it to hurt her.”
Victoria looked at Lily. “I know that isn’t how you heard it.”
Lily pressed closer to Mara. “Mom said people can love babies and still give them away.”
“They can,” Victoria answered carefully. “But I didn’t agree to give you away.”
The child looked down at the bracelet. Victoria resisted the instinct to demand that Lily believe her immediately. An adult had arrived with a completely different explanation for the most important fact in her life. Lily needed room to be confused.
The first proof emerged when attorney Rebecca Sloan arrived. She had represented Victoria during a later attempt to reopen the placement case and knew the documents well enough to recognize a discrepancy within minutes. The relinquishment in Mara’s envelope carried a notary seal dated April 14, eight years earlier. Victoria had been admitted to intensive care that afternoon and remained there until the next morning.
“That doesn’t necessarily make a signature impossible,” Rebecca said. “But it makes the claimed personal appearance very important to verify.”
The notarial certificate stated that Victoria appeared in person at a Bright Harbor office in Manhattan at 2:35 p.m.
Victoria had been in a hospital bed in Los Angeles.
Rebecca laid her own old hospital chronology beside the document.
Mara stared at the two pages.
“That can’t be right.”
“No,” Victoria said. “It can’t.”
Mara began to cry quietly. Lily looked at her in alarm and asked whether somebody was angry with her. Both women answered no at once, then fell silent because their sudden agreement made the room feel stranger.
Rebecca requested the complete adoption file and asked Mara whether she had ever seen an original birth certificate. Mara said Bright Harbor gave her an amended certificate after the adoption and told her the original was sealed. The agency handled every legal step and instructed her not to contact Victoria because the actress had requested permanent confidentiality.
Then Daniel Ross entered.
“Victoria, there’s someone outside asking whether the woman with Lily has already given you the papers.”
“Who?”
“Bright Harbor’s executive director.”
Victoria knew the name before Daniel said it.
Julian Cross.
May you like
Her former husband.
And the man who had signed the hospital’s emergency placement documents on her behalf.
