The foundation lobby smells different today.
There’s still that underlying hospital tang—disinfectant and brewed coffee drifting up from the café—but it’s threaded now with cold air from the open doors and the paper-and-ink scent of press packets. No holiday garlands, no crystal trees. Just metal chairs in straight lines, the kind you rent by the hundred, and a podium framed by microphones that look ready to bite.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the harbor glints a flat winter gray. Boats rock gently in their slips along the narrow peninsula, the same docks where Harbor Glen lines up every December to watch the “Light the Harbor” parade. I can see the largest yacht bobbing near the end, its deck bare for once, no strings of lights, no Mercer crest flag claiming the highest mast.
“You’re doing that thing where your jaw locks,” Riley murmurs next to me.
“My jaw is fine,” I say, dragging my gaze back inside.
She bumps her shoulder into mine. Today she’s in a dark blazer over black jeans, hair braided back from her face. A slim badge clipped to her pocket reads GUEST SPEAKER in block letters that look temporary and solid at the same time.
“You sure about being here?” she asks, voice low.
“I helped crack this open,” I answer. “I’m not going to watch the reforms on livestream with the sound off.”
A few heads turn our way—reporters, staff, people whose names once climbed the Mercer donor wall like ivy. Some recognize me; I catch the quick double-take, the whisper, the glance at their phones. The Mercer crest still floats on the glass above the reception desk—an abstract wave pattern that used to feel omnipresent and unshakeable. Today, a new banner hangs beneath it: TRANSPARENCY • RESTITUTION • REFORM.
Three words standing on stilts, waiting to see if they fall.
The new board chair steps up to the podium and taps the mic. The soft feedback buzz slices through the murmur of conversations. She’s in a charcoal suit with no pearls, no visible designer labels, short natural hair, glasses, and an expression that belongs more to a judge than a hostess.
“Good afternoon,” she says. “I’m Dr. Lila Moreno, chair of the independent board overseeing the Harbor Glen Health and Family Foundation.”
The phrase independent board lands with a weight I feel in my shoulders.
“Thank you for being here,” she continues. “Before we talk about new programs, we need to talk about what this institution did—under the Mercer family’s leadership—to people in this room and beyond it.”
A hush folds around us. Somewhere behind me, a camera shutter clicks, then another. Riley’s hand tightens around the pen in her lap until her knuckles pale.
“For decades,” Dr. Moreno says, “this foundation and its partner hospital provided life-saving care, scholarships, and community programs. Those good works are real.” She pauses, letting the words sit. “But so is the harm. While saving some lives, the leadership here was complicit in erasing others—through irregular adoptions, falsified records, and what advocates have called ‘paper orphans.’ Children were separated from their families under false pretenses, their identities altered on paper, their histories sealed or destroyed.”
My breath shortens, the edges of her words scraping over the parts of my own story that still don’t have clean labels.
“We cannot undo those acts,” she says. “We can name them. We can apologize for the institution’s role. And we can change how we operate so that nothing like this can take root here again.”
She doesn’t say Evelyn’s name. She doesn’t have to. The absence hangs there, a negative space shaped exactly like my mother-in-law’s silhouette in every old gala photo.
“On behalf of the board and the current leadership,” Dr. Moreno says, voice steady, “I offer a formal apology to the adoptees whose records were altered or hidden, to the parents who were misled or coerced, and to the families whose grief was manipulated in the name of philanthropy. You were not collateral damage. You were not unfortunate anomalies. You were wronged.”
A low sound ripples through the room—part exhale, part muffled sob. The apology isn’t a magic spell, but the words land, heavy and overdue.
Riley stares straight ahead, jaw working.
“She said it,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Riley answers, not looking at me. “On camera. With a mic. In this lobby.”
Microphones angle forward. Reporters scribble. For once, no one is scanning to see which yacht Evelyn will stand on at the parade, or whether their name still sits above or below hers on the donor wall. They’re watching for cracks in an institution instead.
Dr. Moreno gestures to a row of reserved seats near the front.
“You have heard a great deal about this scandal from lawyers and journalists,” she says. “Today, you’re going to hear from people who lived inside the gaps in those files. Several survivors and families have agreed to share part of their stories.”
She steps aside.
A woman in her forties rises from the first row. She wears a simple navy dress and holds a piece of paper that trembles just enough to show from the back of the room. Her name tag reads MARIA TORRES.
Riley’s hand brushes mine for a second—quick contact, then retreat.
“Hi,” Maria says into the mic. “I was born at Harbor Glen Memorial. For thirty-five years, my birth certificate said my mother’s name was ‘Unknown.’”
Her voice has that scraped-but-standing quality I recognize from support groups.
“I grew up thinking the answers were gone,” she says. “My adoptive parents loved me the best way they knew. But when my daughter asked me one day whether anyone in our family had heart problems, I realized I had nothing to tell her. No medical history. No story. Just a wall labeled ‘sealed record.’”
She folds the paper in half, then in half again.
“When the investigation into the Mercers broke,” she continues, “I found out there was a file on me sitting three floors below this lobby. It had my mother’s name. It had notes about a ‘special arrangement’ with a donor family. That file was hidden from me for decades. I am still meeting pieces of myself for the first time.”
The room holds still around her words. Somewhere outside, a horn sounds on the water.
“Knowing where you come from shouldn’t be a luxury item,” Maria says. “It’s a human right.”
She steps back, shoulders shaking. Dr. Moreno squeezes her arm as she passes.
Next is a man in his sixties with a weathered face and a tie that fights his collar. Then a younger person in a denim jacket who speaks about aging out of foster care with paperwork that didn’t match their memories. A white-haired grandmother from Queens reads a statement about the daughter she was told died at birth, only to learn last year that the death certificate listed a different baby’s weight.
Each story is short. No one spills their entire life onstage. Just sharp, vital fragments that cut through the foundation-branded brochures on every chair.
Riley leans forward, elbows on her knees, eyes tracking each speaker as if mapping them onto her wall of strings and pins. I picture her motel room months ago, paper orphans converging on red lines leading here. Today, those lines aren’t just red thread. They’re living, breathing people standing at a microphone, saying “me” instead of being listed as “Case 14B.”
When the last testimony ends, Dr. Moreno returns to the podium.
“Thank you,” she says, voice roughened. “For trusting this space with pieces of your stories. We know trust must be earned back, not requested.”
She clicks a remote, and a screen behind her lights up with a slide titled NEW PROTECTIONS & PROGRAMS. Bullet points fill the space: Independent Records Review Panel. Adoptee Access Hotline. Trauma-Informed Counseling Scholarships. External audits. Limits on donor influence.
My eyes catch on one line: OPEN FILE INITIATIVE – DEFAULT TO DISCLOSURE.
“We are implementing a presumption of openness,” Dr. Moreno explains. “Where the law allows, adoptees will receive full, unredacted copies of their records. Where the law restricts us, we will provide everything permitted and advocate to change those laws.”
A reporter raises a hand.
“How do you address people who say the Mercers saved more lives than they harmed?” she asks. “That shutting down their programs would create its own casualties?”
Dr. Moreno’s mouth tightens.
“We are not shutting down care,” she says. “We are changing who controls it. Good deeds do not erase deliberate harm. We will not balance kidnapped histories against renovated wings and call it even.”
Riley’s shoulders loosen by a millimeter.
“Finally,” Dr. Moreno says, “we are establishing a Survivors and Adoptees Advisory Council. Policy that affects you should not be made without you in the room. To that end, we have asked several advocates and lived-experience experts to advise us.”
She turns her head, looking straight at Riley.
“Ms. Riley Shaw,” she says, “has agreed—pending the outcome of certain background checks everyone here can appreciate—to serve as a consultant during the design of our records access and notification policies.”
The air leaves my lungs in a rush.
Riley’s eyes widen. Her pen slips from her hand and clatters softly onto the floor.
“Did you know?” I whisper.
“They asked me to come in for a meeting last week,” she whispers back. “I thought they wanted more stories for their press packets.”
“Riley,” Dr. Moreno adds, “would you be willing to say a few words?”
Every head swivels toward us. A small, bitter part of my brain remembers Evelyn’s hand on my elbow at the Christmas concert, steering me toward the stage like a prop. This is not that. No one is dragging Riley. The invitation hangs there, open.
She looks at me.
“You don’t have to,” I murmur. “This isn’t your job.”
“Feels like it kind of is,” she says, but she studies my face for a beat, checking for pressure.
I nod once. “Only if you want it.”
She stands.
The walk to the podium is short, but in the silence it stretches. Camera lenses track her, the same way they did the night she took the microphone from Evelyn’s stage—only now there’s no glittering balcony above, no risk of bolts giving way under our feet. The danger is quieter: co-option, dilution, the slow sanding down of sharp truths.
Riley reaches the mic and adjusts it down an inch.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Riley Shaw. I’m one of the people whose life got rerouted through this building without informed consent.”
A tiny, dark joke. Not a single person laughs. They’re listening too hard.
“I don’t speak for every adoptee or every survivor,” she continues. “There are more perspectives here than chairs. But I can say this: paperwork does things to bodies. To brains. To families. When you tell a child their story is one thing and the truth is another, you don’t just hurt their feelings. You affect their medical care, their legal rights, their sense of safety in every waiting room that smells like this one.”
She pauses, breathing in that shared antiseptic-coffee air.
“I spent years treating my own curiosity like a character flaw,” she says. “Like asking who my parents were made me ungrateful. The Mercers’ system depended on that shame. On kids like me being too scared, or too trusting, to question the paperwork.”
I feel my own history press in—the half-burned files, my mother’s shaking hands, the awareness that my life brushed against that system even if I wasn’t stolen by it.
“If I do this,” Riley says, nodding toward the screen of bullet points, “I’m not here to make anyone feel better about what happened. I’m here to make sure kids coming through these doors don’t need a conspiracy board in a motel room fifteen years from now just to learn their own names.”
A murmur of agreement runs through the crowd. I catch Dr. Moreno’s slight, relieved nod.
“And to anyone watching who grew up with sealed records or missing pages,” Riley adds, looking directly into the nearest camera, “you’re not a plot twist in someone else’s charity story. You’re the main character. Ask the questions. There are people here now who have to answer.”
She steps back from the mic. The applause starts hesitant, then builds—less of a standing ovation, more of a collective exhale with sound attached. Some reporters clap. Some just keep writing.
Riley walks back down the aisle and folds into the seat beside me. Her hands are shaking so hard I can feel it through the cushions.
“You were good,” I say.
“I was honest,” she answers. “They can decide if that’s good.”
The press conference shifts into Q&A, policy talk, timelines. Words like “auditor” and “ombudsman” float across the room. My mind drifts to the donor wall behind us. Several plaques are gone, leaving faint outlines, lighter rectangles where polished brass used to be. The social hierarchy of Harbor Glen is literally missing pieces now.
“You’re actually going to do it?” I ask quietly. “Consult for them?”
“I’m thinking about it,” she says. “Strategically, it’s huge. You know how much damage I can prevent from the inside?”
“And the risk?” I ask. “Letting them put your name on their website. On their annual report. On their metaphorical yacht.”
She smirks.
“No yacht photos,” she says. “Non-negotiable. But yeah, I see the risk. I also see what happens if we walk away and trust the same types of people who let this happen to police themselves.”
The harbor glows faintly through the glass, the water catching late light that smells like salt even in here. Somewhere up on the hill, patients breathe in that same disinfectant-laced air, unaware that a handful of signatures and bylaws are being rewritten in their name.
“Besides,” Riley adds, “this isn’t the end goal.”
“What is?” I ask, though I already have an idea. Micro-hook, right on cue.
She taps her temple with the end of her pen.
“Bigger net,” she says. “This foundation is one node. I’m already thinking about a separate organization that isn’t tied to any hospital. Somewhere people can go even if the place that hurt them won’t admit it yet.”
My chest tightens in a different way—less constriction, more expansion I’m not ready to name.
“You’re going to build your own thing,” I say.
“Our own thing,” she corrects. “If you want in.”
Onstage, Dr. Moreno starts talking about the “Light the Harbor” parade, how this year’s event will include a candlelight vigil for missing and misidentified children, and how the foundation will retire the Mercer family yacht as the lead boat. A few older donors shift in their seats, uncomfortable. Good.
“So this is what rebirth looks like,” I say quietly. “Less champagne, more bylaws.”
“Less crest, more consent forms,” Riley says.
The press conference winds down. People stand, stretch, form clumps. Survivors hug in the aisles, exchanging numbers. Staff confer with clipboards. Reporters make beelines for Dr. Moreno, for Maria, for Riley. A local TV anchor glances at me, then decides against a soundbite; I’m not the story she needs today.
“You okay if I go talk next steps with them?” Riley asks, nodding toward a cluster of board members.
“Go,” I say. “I’ll be right here. Or out by the water.”
She squeezes my hand once, quick and firm, then heads toward the knot of people by the podium. I watch as they draw her in—not as a headline, not as a threat assessment folder, but as someone whose lived experience reshapes policy bullet points.
The Mercers built an empire by deciding whose stories counted. Watching Riley stand there, pen in hand, arguing over footnote language, I realize we’re finally starting to pry that power out of their polished fingers.
I drift toward the windows.
The harbor spreads below, the path along the docks lined with new posters announcing the parade’s “Remembrance and Reckoning” theme. No Mercer crest, just silhouettes of boats lit up against dark water. Harbor Glen is still Harbor Glen—country club waitlists untouched, gossip thick at the café—but there’s a crack in the surface now.
My phone buzzes.
A text from Daniel pops up: How’s the press circus? Need a ride back or are you staying to scheme with Riley?
I smile at the screen, typing back: Reforms announced. Riley recruited. Scheming likely. Will report later.
I slip the phone into my pocket and rest my forehead lightly against the cool glass. Hospital air swirls behind me; salt air presses from the other side. Between them, my own breath fogs a small, private circle.
Behind me, chairs scrape. Ahead of me, the boats rock, ready for whatever shapes the next parade takes.
The foundation is changing. Not fast enough, not perfectly. But enough that people are saying “we were wrong” into microphones instead of whispering “accident” into polished hallways.
The question nibbling at the edge of my mind is what comes after this press conference, after this rebirth with all its paperwork and promises—what kind of life Riley and I can build that isn’t just a reaction to what the Mercers did, but something of our own.
For the first time, the answer doesn’t feel tied to a crest on a wall or a name on a yacht. It feels tied to the next room we step into together—and to a door neither of us has opened yet, one with her name on it, waiting somewhere beyond this lobby.