Chapter 13 - Seventeen Children
The story became bigger than our family whether we wanted it to or not.
Seventeen St. Agnes files showed serious consent questions.
Not all were like Clara's.
Some mothers had signed but said they were pressured.
Some records were incomplete.
Three contained false death language.
The diocese hired an outside review team after June Park and two former staff members gave statements.
Lawyers contacted affected families privately before any public report.
Glen refused interviews.
Clara did too.
Dad wanted to issue a statement about Elaine.
I told him no.
"You do not get to manage Mom's image now."
He accepted that.
For the first time, maybe.
The review found Dr. Peter Harlan had personally received adoption-related consulting payments through his wife's company.
He was still alive.
Eighty-eight.
Assisted living.
Glen asked to meet him.
I thought it was a terrible idea.
Clara said the same.
Then we stopped deciding for him.
He went with an attorney and an investigator from the review team.
Harlan remembered the name Mayfield.
That was the worst part.
Not because Clara had been unique.
Because she had not.
"Families wanted certainty," he said.
Glen stared.
"So you gave them babies?"
"We placed children in stable homes."
"By telling mothers they were dead?"
Harlan looked away.
He blamed the era.
The church.
Parents.
Social expectations.
Then finally himself.
"I believed a frightened teenager's wishes mattered less than a married couple's readiness."
There it was.
The belief beneath the paperwork.
Glen asked, "Did you remember me?"
Harlan said no.
Glen later told me that answer helped.
He had spent days imagining a villain who had personally targeted him.
Instead he had been processed by a system that found it easy to stop seeing individual people.
The legal consequences were limited by age, records, and time.
Civil claims moved forward against institutions and surviving entities.
Harlan surrendered nothing meaningful; he was already retired.
That frustrated Clara.
"He gets to be old."
Glen nodded.
"And we still get the truth."
Neither was enough.
Both were real.
Then Dad made a decision none of us expected.
He filed a sworn statement describing every time Elaine showed him evidence and every time he chose silence.
Including the letter he intercepted from Clara to Glen.
His lawyer warned him it could expose him to civil claims.
Dad signed anyway.
Clara read the statement.
Then packed a suitcase.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
"My sister's."
Dad went pale.
"For how long?"
Clara looked at him.
"Long enough to find out whether I chose this marriage or just stayed inside another secret."
----------------------------------------
The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.
May you like
If you enjoyed the story, bookmark my site: https://metro.treeiq.biz
New stories are posted daily, so check back for updates.
