Chapter 12 - The Original Packet
The storage unit smelled like cardboard and motor oil.
Henry Cole had kept everything.
Old tax returns.
Glen's first baseball glove.
A broken lamp Margaret said she had hated since 1998.
At the back sat one banker's box.
ST. AGNES.
Glen opened it himself.
The original surrender document had Clara's signature.
But the signature page was attached to a different form.
Paper color changed.
Staple holes did not match.
A copy of Clara's hospital intake sheet showed the same signature in the same position.
Someone had lifted it.
Not digitally.
Physically.
Photocopied and repurposed.
Glen sat on the concrete floor.
"So she didn't sign me away."
Clara stood ten feet away.
"No."
Margaret said, "And we didn't steal you."
Glen looked at her.
"No."
That mattered too.
The packet contained correspondence between Henry and Harlan.
There was also a Polaroid of Margaret holding newborn Glen in a hospital corridor. Henry had written on the back: FIRST DAY HOME.
Clara looked at the picture and sat down.
Margaret immediately reached for it, then stopped.
'You can look,' she said.
Clara held the photograph with both hands.
'I don't want to take this from you.'
Margaret swallowed.
'Looking isn't taking.'
For almost a minute, the two women stared at the same baby from opposite sides of a life neither had chosen.
Then Glen gently took the photograph and placed it back in the box.
'Not today,' he said.
Both women nodded.
The packet contained correspondence between Henry and Harlan.
Henry asked twice whether the birth mother had been counseled.
Harlan replied yes.
Lie.
Henry asked whether future contact was possible.
Harlan replied:
Birth mother expressly refuses contact.
Another lie.
Margaret sank onto a box.
"We believed him."
Clara looked at her.
"I know."
That was the first kindness they gave each other.
Not forgiveness.
Specific relief.
Then I found an envelope addressed to Elaine.
Never mailed.
Inside was a copy of the $6,500 payment and a handwritten note from Henry:
I think something was wrong. I do not know what to do without hurting him.
Henry had known enough to worry.
Not enough to act.
Again.
Glen stared at the box.
"I need everyone to stop telling me they were afraid."
Nobody argued.
He stood.
"I want a week."
Clara nodded immediately.
Margaret did too.
I asked, "From me?"
Glen looked at me.
"No."
Relief hurt.
"From being the center of everybody else's guilt."
We went home.
For seven days, nobody discussed St. Agnes around him unless he started it.
On day eight, Glen made one call.
Not to Clara.
Not Margaret.
Not Dad.
To Sister Miriam.
"How many other children?" he asked.
She answered:
"We have identified seventeen cases that need review."
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