Chapter 6 - THE GIRL WITHOUT A NAME
Hope was crueler than grief.
Nathaniel learned that over the next forty-eight hours.
Grief had edges.
It hurt, but eventually a person learned its shape.
Hope changed every minute.
It lifted him.
Dropped him.
Made him afraid to breathe.
Federal investigators reopened Grace Cole’s missing-person case.
The burned remains were reexamined.
Medical records were requested.
Hospitals within two hundred miles of the crash were searched.
Nathaniel hired nobody privately.
For once, he refused to use money to bulldoze through a process.
He wanted facts.
Only facts.
Maria remained at the estate because authorities believed Malcolm might still target Tomas’s evidence.
Lily began following Nathaniel everywhere.
Not constantly.
Just enough that he noticed when she wasn’t there.
On the third morning, he found her sitting underneath Elizabeth’s photograph in the breakfast room.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“The girl.”
Nathaniel’s heart stopped.
“What girl?”
Lily looked at him as though the answer were obvious.
“The big girl.”
“What does she look like?”
Maria entered behind him.
“Nathaniel.”
He raised a hand.
Not now.
Lily thought carefully.
“Brown hair.”
Grace had brown hair.
“Anything else?”
“She has a moon on her arm.”
Nathaniel’s breath caught.
Grace had been born with a pale crescent-shaped birthmark near her left elbow.
Maria saw his face.
“What?”
He couldn’t answer.
Lily continued coloring.
Nathaniel crouched.
“Where did you see her?”
“In the yellow room.”
The nursery again.
“Was Elizabeth there?”
Lily nodded.
“What did she say?”
Maria stepped forward.
“That’s enough.”
Nathaniel looked at her.
“He needs facts,” Maria said quietly. “You said that yourself.”
He stood.
She was right.
Lily was three.
Whatever she dreamed or imagined could not become evidence simply because Nathaniel desperately wanted it to.
His phone rang.
Daniel Mercer.
Nathaniel answered.
“We found the sedan.”
He gripped the counter.
“How?”
“The witness who changed his statement finally talked.”
“Why did he change it?”
“Someone paid him.”
“Malcolm?”
“Yes.”
Nathaniel shut his eyes.
“Who owned the sedan?”
Mercer hesitated.
“St. Anne’s Medical Outreach.”
Nathaniel frowned.
“A hospital?”
“Mobile medical charity. It closed three years ago.”
“What was one of its cars doing at the crash?”
“We’re working on that.”
Six hours later, Nathaniel was sitting in a federal office when an investigator placed an old emergency intake form in front of him.
A little girl had been brought to a rural urgent care facility thirty-seven miles north of the crash at 10:12 p.m.
Approximate age: six.
Female.
Head injury.
Smoke inhalation.
No identification.
The woman who brought her claimed she had found the child wandering near Route 91.
Nathaniel’s hands shook.
“What happened to her?”
“The child was transferred.”
“Where?”
“To St. Anne’s pediatric rehabilitation center.”
“Name?”
“She couldn’t remember.”
Nathaniel stopped breathing.
“Couldn’t remember what?”
“Anything.”
The investigator looked at him.
“Severe concussion. Possible traumatic amnesia.”
Nathaniel stared at the form.
A note at the bottom read:
DISTINGUISHING MARK: CRESCENT BIRTHMARK, LEFT ARM.
Nathaniel collapsed into the chair.
Grace.
He knew before anyone said it.
His daughter had survived.
The investigator continued carefully.
“Mr. Cole, we still need DNA.”
“Where is she?”
The question came out broken.
The investigator didn’t answer immediately.
Nathaniel stood.
“Where is my daughter?”
“St. Anne’s closed eighteen months after she arrived.”
“And?”
“The child had already entered foster placement.”
Nathaniel went pale.
“Under what name?”
“Hope Anne.”
Hope.
Someone had named his daughter Hope because nobody knew who she was.
Nathaniel covered his mouth.
He imagined Grace waking in a strange hospital.
No mother.
No father.
No memory.
Six years old.
Alone.
“Where did she go?”
“We’re tracing placements.”
“How many?”
“Several.”
He looked physically sick.
“How could nobody connect her to Grace Cole?”
“The initial missing-person case listed her as deceased. St. Anne’s intake system was private. There was no automatic cross-match.”
Nathaniel turned away.
Five years.
His daughter had been somewhere in the world.
Possibly believing nobody wanted her.
The investigator’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
Then looked at Nathaniel.
“We have a current school enrollment.”
Nathaniel stopped moving.
“Where?”
“A town outside Albany.”
Nathaniel whispered, “New York?”
“Yes.”
“Family?”
“Foster mother. Same placement for almost three years.”
“What’s her name?”
“Rebecca Sloan.”
“And Grace?”
“Still registered as Hope.”
Nathaniel’s eyes filled.
“How old?”
“Eleven.”
Of course.
He knew that.
Grace would be eleven.
He had marked every birthday privately.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
He had bought a cake every year and never told anyone.
The investigator warned him.
“You cannot just show up.”
Nathaniel stared.
“My daughter is three hours away.”
“I know.”
“I have been looking at an empty bedroom for five years.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
His voice cracked.
“My daughter is three hours away.”
Maria met him at the estate when he returned.
She saw his face and knew.
“You found her.”
He nodded.
Maria covered her mouth.
Lily ran toward him.
Nathaniel caught her automatically.
The little girl wrapped her arms around his neck.
He held her.
He had not held a child like that since Grace.
His knees nearly failed him.
Maria stepped closer.
“DNA?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Are you going?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know what they’ll tell her?”
Nathaniel looked down.
That question frightened him more than anything.
What if Grace didn’t remember him?
What if she loved Rebecca Sloan as her mother?
What if Nathaniel’s arrival destroyed the only stable life she could remember?
He whispered, “I don’t know how to be her father anymore.”
Maria looked at him.
“Then don’t walk in trying to be the man you were five years ago.”
Nathaniel met her eyes.
“Be the man she needs now.”
The next afternoon, DNA confirmed it.
Probability of paternity:
99.9998 percent.
Grace Elizabeth Cole was alive.
Nathaniel read the result once.
Twice.
Then bent over and cried so hard Daniel Mercer had to hold him upright.
Five years earlier, fire had taken Elizabeth.
But it had not taken Grace.
May you like
And after five years of darkness, Nathaniel’s daughter was coming back into his life.
The only question was whether she would remember him.
