I drive back up the peninsula on autopilot, the curve of the road hugging the gray water on one side and the rising hill on the other. The hospital sits above the town like a gleaming ship run aground, glass catching the thin winter light, Mercer Foundation letters marching across its façade. Even with the windows rolled up, I swear the scent of disinfectant rides the air, blending with salt and distant woodsmoke.
By the time I reach the gates of the cliffside estate, my phone buzzes with a text from Daniel—Just slammed with emails, we’ll talk tonight—and nothing in me has room for another argument. I tell the housekeeper I have a headache and skip lunch, retreating to the guest room that now feels more like a surveillance cell than a haven.
The room smells faintly of lemon polish and the evergreen wreath hanging from the interior door. Downstairs, muffled through layers of wood and plaster, I hear cutlery clinking on china, the low murmur of Mercer conversation, a burst of brittle laughter that could be Evelyn’s. Waves boom softly against the rocks far below, a slow heartbeat under the house.
I set my bag on the bed and pull out the envelope from Mrs. Donnelly. The Mercer Hospital letterhead at the top has faded, but the crest is still visible, that abstract wave repeated in every corner of this town. I don’t open it yet. Instead I slide it under the pillow like a talisman and reach for my phone.
Lunch break, I tell myself. She always calls on her lunch break.
I scroll to Mom’s name and hover there. My thumb rests on the call button. My mouth feels dry, coppery, the taste of ash from Mrs. Donnelly’s fireplace still lodged somewhere in the back of my throat.
If I push this, everything I know about myself could tilt.
I hit call anyway.
The dial tone hums in my ear while I walk to the window. Harbor Glen spreads below, the town center’s neat rows of boutiques and bakeries tracing the spine of the peninsula, the docks reaching into the Sound like fingers. Farther up the hill, the hospital’s glass glints, and beyond that, donor walls and country clubs and a world that ranks people by where their names are engraved.
“Hey, honey.” My mother’s voice bursts through, bright and slightly breathless. “You caught me between bites. How’s the fancy-people Christmas?”
Relief washes over me in a quick, guilty wave at the sound of her. I press my forehead lightly against the cool windowpane.
“Loud,” I say. “Sparkly. Overcatered.”
She laughs. In the background I catch the hiss of a soda machine, the distant overhead beep of some monitor, the clatter of trays—her world, compressed into tinny sounds.
“Do they at least have those tiny quiches you like?” she asks. “The ones with the spinach?”
“They have quiches that probably cost more than my first car,” I say. “And the foundation logo is stamped on the napkins.”
“Of course it is.” I hear the rustle of a paper bag, the crinkle of plastic. “So what’s up? You never call in the middle of the day. Everything okay with Daniel?”
I picture his empty side of the bed from this morning, the sheet tucked in too neatly, that gaping pocket of space. My chest tightens.
“We’re fine,” I lie, because I can’t unpack that and what I really called for in the same breath. “I just… I had a question. Kind of a weird one.”
“Shoot.” She takes a sip of something; the straw squeaks against a plastic lid.
I walk away from the window and start pacing the length of the rug, past the antique dresser, the tasteful coastal painting, the door to the private en suite. The room’s soft colors press in.
“Did you ever work at Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital?” I ask.
Silence rushes down the line. The soda machine hiss stops; even the distant beeps fade in my awareness. I look at the phone screen to make sure the call hasn’t dropped.
“Mom?”
“Where did that come from?” she says finally. Her brightness has flattened.
“I’m standing on a hill where I can see it,” I say. “The Mercer family basically owns half the building. I’ve been… asking questions about the hospital. And I keep running into things that don’t make sense.”
Her breath goes in, sharp and audible.
“I did some travel shifts all over when you were little,” she says. “You know that. Clinics, rehab centers, a couple hospitals upstate—”
“I’m not asking about upstate,” I interrupt. “I’m asking about Harbor Glen. Did you work there?”
My reflection in the mirror catches my eye: pale face, pinched mouth, one hand gripping the phone like it might bolt. The Mercer crest embroidered on the throw pillow behind me winks in silver thread.
“Why?” she says. “Why this all of a sudden?”
“Because I sat in a retired nurse’s living room today while she burned adoption files from Mercer Hospital in her fireplace,” I say. My voice comes out calmer than I feel. “Because I held a charred scrap of paper with their logo on it. Because there’s a trust document here with ‘second daughter’ written on it and no name. And because I have an envelope on this bed that might have my birth year at the top.”
A plastic cup cracks on her end, a tiny snap that makes me jump.
“Hannah,” she says slowly, “what are you getting yourself into?”
“Did you work there?” I repeat.
Long seconds tick by. Downstairs, a door slams, footsteps thud faintly up a back staircase, then fade. The smell of roasting meat drifts under the guest room door, heavy enough to make my stomach turn.
“Yes,” my mother says at last. The word is quiet, scraped clean of denial. “A short stint. It was a long time ago.”
Heat floods my face. I sink down onto the edge of the bed, the mattress giving under my weight.
“When?” I ask.
She exhales, a shudder through the line.
“Before you were born,” she says. “The year before, mostly. Some shifts later on when you were tiny and staying with your grandmother. They recruited me. Sent some glossy brochure in the mail about the Mercer Foundation’s ‘Nurse Fellowship Initiative.’ Extra pay, housing subsides, all the buzzwords.”
“Recruited,” I repeat. “From our town?”
“From every town within driving distance,” she says. “They liked young nurses willing to move, especially ones without roots. People who needed a fresh start.”
I stare at the envelope lump under the pillow. My heartbeat has migrated up into my throat.
“You never told me that,” I manage.
“It was a few months,” she says. “It didn’t seem worth mentioning. You hate that town; I wasn’t going to rewrite your childhood with some story about a fancy hospital on the Sound.”
I close my eyes. The hospital on the hill from the drive in flashes behind my eyelids, all that glass and chrome and donor plaques. The way Harbor Glen draws lines between people—who rides on which yacht, who gets which room with a view.
“What was it like?” I ask. “Working there.”
She lets out a humorless little breath.
“Pretty,” she says. “Too pretty. New floors that smelled like lemon and antiseptic, big windows looking out over the water. They loved showing off the donor wall in the lobby whenever a Mercer came through with a camera crew. But downstairs, in the maternity wing, there were things that felt… off.”
I hold my breath.
“What things?”
“They had this program,” she says. “Officially it was ‘support for vulnerable expectant mothers.’ Unofficially, it focused on girls under thirty, unmarried, preferably alone. Social workers in cardigan sets and pearls would hover outside certain rooms, waiting for a consult. The nurses started calling them the ‘angels of better choices.’”
My stomach clenches.
“They pressured them,” I say.
“They nudged,” she replies. “Friendly little chats about ‘opportunities’ and ‘giving a child the life they deserve.’ They had glossy pamphlets ready before some of those girls even finished prenatal intake. One minute you’re getting your blood drawn, the next somebody’s handing you Mercer Foundation literature about adoption success stories.”
“Did you tell anyone?” I ask.
She barks a short laugh.
“Who was I going to tell?” she says. “They signed my checks. They covered one of your grandmother’s hospital bills after her fall. Every time I blinked, that stupid wave crest was in my face—on the scrubs, the walls, the pens.”
My hand slides over the pillow, fingers finding the corner of the envelope hidden there.
“You said this was before I was born,” I say softly. “Were you already pregnant when you worked there?”
Another pause. The air in the room presses on my skin.
“Yes,” she says, so quietly I have to strain to hear it. “I was three months along when I started.”
Something shifts in my ribcage, like a floorboard giving way.
“Did they know?” I ask.
“Of course they knew,” she says. “I was a nurse, not a magician. I was throwing up between rounds. They made noises about their ‘special concern for staff in your situation.’ My supervisor suggested I talk to one of those social workers off the record. She said, ‘They help our girls think clearly when hormones make everything feel bigger than it is.’”
I taste bile.
“Did you talk to them?” I whisper.
The background hospital noise on her end grows louder—the beeping, the overhead announcements. Or maybe my own pulse is just roaring.
“Yes,” she says. “Once.”
I stand again, the energy too much for sitting. I pace the length of the rug, toes sinking into the soft fibers, the phone slick in my palm.
“What did they say?”
“They asked questions,” she says. “About your father. About money. About whether I had family support or was ‘effectively alone.’ They laid out options in this… soothing voice. One of them said, ‘You could give this child to a family who can offer stability and connections you simply don’t have.’ The other nodded along like a bobblehead.”
My breaths come shorter now.
“Did you consider it?” I ask. “Giving me up.”
The question hangs between us, enormous. I hear a faint sniff on her end, the crinkle of a napkin.
“I was twenty-two and terrified,” she says. “Your father was gone, my mother’s house was already full, and every billboard from here to the Sound told me I was failing if I couldn’t give you the world. So yes. For about five very bad days, I considered it.”
The room tilts. I reach for the dresser to steady myself, fingers brushing the smooth wood.
“Did you sign anything?” I ask. “Papers, forms—”
“Preliminary intake,” she says quickly. “They love forms. Consent to talk to an adoption agency, release for them to share medical records with their ‘partner programs.’ Nothing final. I never signed anything relinquishing you.”
Her voice has picked up speed, words tumbling out faster, as if outrunning an accusation.
“I went home after one of those meetings and your grandmother looked at me like I’d sprouted horns,” she goes on. “She said, ‘You bring that baby into this world and we figure the rest out.’ Then she took the pamphlets out of my hands and ripped them up over the trash. I called the next day and told them I wouldn’t be using their services. I quit the hospital two weeks later.”
I press my knuckles to my mouth. My eyes burn.
“You never told me any of this,” I say.
“Because I kept you,” she snaps. Then her voice softens. “Because I thought that was the only part that mattered.”
My heart stutters at the edge in her tone. Beneath it, though, something else thrums—fear.
“Do you remember the name of the program?” I ask. “The adoption one.”
“They changed names like other people change shoes,” she says. “Mercer Family Futures. Harbor Glen Pathways. All that branding. The pamphlets had pictures of smiling couples on sailboats, that stupid Light the Harbor boat parade in the background. I remember thinking, I’ll never be those people, and they know it.”
Light the Harbor. I see the parade in my mind, the way locals described it—a floating census, the whole town watching who stood on which yacht, who waved from the Mercer decks.
“Mom,” I say, “the nurse I talked to today—Mrs. Donnelly—she said there were notes in some of the files. Things like ‘mother changed her mind but was overruled.’ Crib tags swapped. Babies logged one way in one place, another way somewhere else.”
“That’s illegal,” my mother says sharply. “That’s beyond—”
“So is burning adoption records in someone’s fireplace,” I cut in. “And yet here we are.”
She goes silent again. I hear her swallow.
“Did anyone from the hospital follow up after you quit?” I ask. “Call you? Ask why you changed your mind?”
“A woman phoned once,” she says slowly. “She said she was checking in, making sure I understood the ‘consequences of choosing to parent.’ The line had this weird echo, like other people were listening. Your grandmother picked up the extension in the other room and told her never to call again. That was it.”
My pulse skitters.
“Do you remember her name?” I ask.
“No,” she says too fast.
“Mom—”
“It was decades ago,” she insists. “They all blurred together. Administrators, social workers, foundation reps.”
Foundation. The word lands like a weight.
“Was Evelyn Mercer one of them?” I ask. “Did you ever meet her?”
A fork clatters on tile in the background. Fabric rustles, maybe her uniform shifting.
“Where did you hear that name?” she whispers.
“She’s my mother-in-law,” I say. “She runs the foundation. I found a trust document in her office labeled Mercer Family Trust II – Second Daughter Beneficiary. No name. The nurse today said the Mercers had ‘special babies’ they handled differently. And now you’re telling me you were in that hospital, pregnant with me, in one of their programs.”
I hear her breathing, shallow and uneven. My skin prickles.
“You listen to me,” she says. The lunchroom noise has faded; it sounds like she’s stepped into a hallway or closet. Her voice has that tight edge she used when I was a kid about to do something reckless. “You stay away from that woman’s office. You don’t go snooping in their papers.”
“That ship has sailed,” I say. “I already took pictures.”
“Hannah,” she hisses, “do you have any idea what people like that can do to someone like you? You grew up with my last name, not theirs. You don’t have a yacht with your initials on the side. You are not above the law on some cliff.”
Her words hit straight and hard, no sugar. For a second I can smell our old kitchen in New Jersey—the burnt-coffee residue, the lemon dish soap, the cheap linoleum under my socked feet—overlaying the polished wood and ocean air of this room.
“I’m not doing this because I want a yacht,” I say. “I’m doing this because there’s a girl out there who might be the ‘second daughter’ they wrote into that trust instead of Lydia, and because they’re erasing people’s lives to keep it quiet. And now I have to wonder whether my life got brushed up against that eraser too.”
Her breath catches.
“No,” she says. “No. I backed out. I took you home from a different hospital. The adoption never happened.”
“Which hospital?” I ask.
The question hangs there, heavy.
“We can talk about that later,” she says. “When you’re not there.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise.
“What does ‘there’ have to do with it?” I ask. “The phone line?”
“You’re calling me from a house those people own,” she says. “In a town they built half the damn donor walls for. You really think they don’t have ways of knowing who’s poking around?”
A log shifts in one of the downstairs fireplaces; the faint crack carries up through the vents. The room smells suddenly too rich, the evergreen and polish and ocean air all crowding my lungs.
“Mom,” I say, “did my birth ever cross their records? Even for a second?”
There’s a beat where I swear I can hear her heart pounding through the line.
“I have to get back,” she says abruptly. “My break’s over.”
“You just started it,” I protest. “You said you were between bites.”
“Something came up,” she says. Her voice shakes now, a tremor she’s trying to flatten. “We’ll talk later. Not on this line. I’ll… I’ll explain when I can.”
“When?” I demand. “Tonight? Next week? Thirty more years from now?”
“Soon,” she says. “Just—promise me you won’t say Evelyn’s name to anyone there. Not in that house. Not to her. Not yet.”
Panic flares in my chest.
“Why not?” I ask. “What does she—”
“Hannah, sweetheart, please.” The old endearment lands on me like a hand reaching through time. “I have to go. Don’t push this alone. And don’t trust that family to protect you over themselves.”
“Mom, did you sign something at Mercer Hospital with my due date on it?” I press. “Did my name ever—”
The line clicks. Then the flat, indifferent beep of disconnection fills my ear.
I lower the phone slowly, the dial tone buzzing against my palm, and stare at the guest room door. The Mercer crest on the pillow behind me gleams in the corner of my vision, its abstract waves knotted into the fabric.
My own origin story, the one about the tired night-shift nurse and the deadbeat dad and the miracle baby who made everything worth it, tilts in my mind, revealing blank spaces beneath the edges.
Somewhere between this house on the cliff and the hospital on the hill, a version of my life might exist in burned paper and erased names.
I slide my hand under the pillow and feel the envelope crinkle, my fingers brushing the raised ink of the Mercer logo, and I realize that until I read what’s inside—and force my mother to finish that interrupted sentence—I have no idea whose story I’m living in.