“That’s impossible.”
Martin didn’t interrupt.
“She raised me.”
“Yes.”
“She was there every day of my life.”
“Yes.”
“She was my mother.”
“Of course she was.”
I pushed the letter away.
“Then what is this?”
Martin folded his hands.
“It’s the story of how you came to live with her.”
⸻
According to the documents Eleanor had preserved, I was born in March 1987 at a hospital in western North Carolina.
My biological mother was a seventeen-year-old girl named Rebecca Sloan.
She had no stable home.
Her parents had thrown her out when they discovered she was pregnant.
She spent the final months of her pregnancy staying with friends and occasionally sleeping in her car.
Caroline Brooks was working at the hospital as a nursing assistant.
She met Rebecca during a prenatal appointment.
Over the following weeks, Caroline began bringing her food and helping her find somewhere safe to stay.
When Rebecca went into labor, Caroline was there.
I was born healthy.
But Rebecca developed serious complications.
She died two days later.
There was no father listed on my birth certificate.
No grandparents willing to take responsibility.
And no clear plan for what would happen to me.
Caroline had recently lost a pregnancy of her own.
She was grieving.
She was also unmarried and struggling financially.
But when she learned I might enter foster care, she asked whether she could take me home.
A hospital social worker helped arrange a temporary placement.
That social worker was Patricia Mercer.
I looked up from the documents.
“Patricia knew?”
Martin nodded.
“She was involved from the beginning.”
“Then why did she act like we’d just met when I was eleven?”
“Because by then, she’d discovered something was wrong with your adoption.”
⸻
Caroline had been allowed to care for me temporarily while the county searched for relatives and reviewed the placement.
