Chapter 19: Digging Deeper

Then who was the man in the basement?

The question gnawed at me as I stared at the custody form in my hands. Mark was gone, leaving the smell of expensive cologne and fear in his wake. I was alone with a file that proved Edith had shipped a baby to Canada in 1988.

If that baby was Leo... then the man I had rescued from the dumbwaiter shaft wasn't Clara's son.

I grabbed my phone. It was 2:00 a.m. Ben wouldn't be asleep. Not after tonight.

"Ben," I said when he answered on the first ring. "I need you to check something. The man we pulled out of the basement. Leo."

"He's safe," Ben said. "He's at my place. He's eating cereal and watching the weather channel like it's the most fascinating thing on earth."

"Ben, listen to me. I don't think he's Leo."

There was a silence on the line. "What do you mean? He said he was Leo. He knew about the exchange."

"Mark just showed me a custody transfer form," I said, pacing my small living room. "Edith sent Clara's baby to a place called The Sanctuary in Montreal. In 1988."

"Maybe she lied," Ben suggested. "Maybe she faked the transfer."

"Or maybe she didn't," I said. "Ben, ask him his birthday."

"Hold on."

I heard muffled voices in the background. Then Ben came back on the line.

"He says he doesn't know. He says she never told him."

"Ask him what his earliest memory is."

Another pause. Longer this time.

"He says... he remembers a fire station."

The phone nearly slipped from my hand. *Fire Station 4.* The place where Baby Girl Doe—where *I*—was supposedly found.

"He remembers being cold," Ben continued. "And he remembers a woman in a red coat picking him up."

Edith had a red coat in the eighties. I had seen it in photos.

"Sarah, what's going on?"

"The baby at the fire station wasn't a girl," I whispered. "It was a boy. The intake form was altered. Edith didn't just swap Clara's baby for a foundling. She swapped Clara's baby for *two* foundlings."

I looked at the "Baby Sarah" album on my shelf. The perfect, curated history that started at three months old.

"She needed a girl," I said, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "The will. *In the event the first grandchild is female, the Trust shall be administered by the legal guardian.* She needed a girl to control the money. So she found one."

"You," Ben said.

"Me. But she found a boy first. The baby at the fire station. And she couldn't just throw him back."

"So she kept him," Ben said, his voice horrified. "She kept him in the basement."

"She kept him as a spare," I said. "In case the girl didn't work out. Or in case... in case she needed leverage."

I hung up. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone. I wasn't just a placeholder. I was the second draft. The revision.

And the first draft had been locked in the dark for thirty years.

I needed to find the money trail. Edith had paid the doctor. She had paid the lawyer. She had paid the furniture store. There had to be a record of the other payments. The ones that kept the secrets buried.

I drove back to the Hoard. It was the only place Edith couldn't control. The only place where her pristine narrative fell apart under the weight of receipts and rot.

I went to the kitchen. The sculpture of trash in the corner was still there, a monument to Clara's madness—or her genius. She had hidden the crib receipt inside it. What else had she hidden?

I started tearing the sculpture apart. Wire cut my hands. Glass shattered on the floor. I pulled out wads of newspaper, old coffee cups, plastic bags.

And then I saw it. A stack of boxes labeled *Financials*. But they weren't Clara's tax returns. They were Edith's.

Clara had been stealing Edith's mail. For years.

I ripped open a box from 1988. Bank statements. Canceled checks.

I flipped through them frantically. Check #104 to Dr. Thorne. I found it.

But there was another check. Check #105.

*Pay to the Order of: The Sanctuary.*

*Amount: $100,000.00.*

*Memo: Donation.*

She *had* sent the baby to Montreal. She had paid them to take him.

But then I found Check #106.

*Pay to the Order of: Fire Station 4 Benevolent Fund.*

*Amount: $10,000.00.*

*Memo: Gratitude.*

She had paid the fire station. She had bribed them to look the other way when she took the baby boy.

And then, Check #107.

*Pay to the Order of: Dr. Aris Thorne.*

*Amount: $50,000.00.*

*Memo: Services Rendered - Intake 88-402.*

She paid Thorne twice. Once for the fake death certificate for Clara's baby. And once to alter the intake form for the foundling. To change *Baby Boy Doe* to *Baby Girl Doe*.

Wait.

I stared at the check. *Intake 88-402.*

I grabbed the Polaroid from my pocket. The one from my baby album. *Intake 88-402.*

The baby in the picture was a boy. The name on the card was *Baby Boy Doe.*

But the check said *Baby Girl Doe.*

Edith hadn't found a girl. She hadn't adopted a girl.

She had *made* a girl.

I looked down at my own body. At the hands that looked nothing like Edith's or Mark's.

I wasn't a Thorne. I wasn't a Sterling.

I was the boy from the fire station.

But that was impossible. I was a woman. I had given birth. I had a son.

Unless...

Unless the baby in the Polaroid wasn't me.

Unless the baby in the Polaroid was the man in the basement.

And I...

I scrambled for the next box. 1989.

I found a receipt. From a private investigator.

*Subject: Locate Female Infant. DOB approx June 1988.*

*Status: Found. Purchased.*

*Source: Dr. Aris Thorne.*

*Notes: Mother deceased. Father unknown.*

I wasn't the foundling from the fire station. I was the doctor's secret. His mistake.

Edith had bought me from Dr. Thorne a year later. She had swapped the babies *again*.

She put the boy in the basement. She put me in the nursery. And she pretended I had been there the whole time.

I dropped the receipt. The room was spinning.

Three babies.

Clara's son, Leo, sent to Montreal.

The Fire Station boy, locked in the basement.

And me, the doctor's daughter, bought to be the heiress.

Edith wasn't just a kidnapper. She was a collector.

And she still had one check left to write.

I grabbed the checkbook carbon from the pile. The last check Edith had written before Clara stole the book.

*Check #150.*

*Pay to the Order of: The Sanctuary.*

*Amount: $500,000.00.*

*Memo: Final Payment.*

*Date: yesterday.*

She had sent money to Montreal yesterday.

Why?

If Clara's son was gone... if he had been adopted out... why was she still paying them?

Unless he wasn't adopted.

Unless he was still there.

And unless Edith was paying them to keep him quiet.

Or to silence him permanently.