Back in the guest room, I shut the door until the latch clicks and wait, listening.
The house hums around me—distant footsteps on the main staircase, the muffled whirr of some hidden heating system, the soft boom of waves against the rocks far below. The air smells faintly of laundry detergent, wood polish, and the ghost of Evelyn’s perfume from when she inspected the room on our first night, declaring it “cozy” like a verdict.
I cross to the window and press my fingers to the cold glass. The Sound stretches outward, a dark slab under a low clouded sky. Down the peninsula, I can just make out the twinkle of Harbor Glen’s town center and, higher up, the pale rectangular glow of the hospital. That wing Evelyn built—her name in brushed metal letters on the donor wall—is lit like a beacon.
At-risk children, she always says in interviews. The words curl in my head and twist around second daughter.
I pull the curtains closed, shut out the cliff and the town and the hospital, and climb onto the bed with my laptop. The duvet puffs under my knees, crisp and overstuffed, rustling like new money. A Mercer-crest throw pillow gets shoved to the floor.
I open the browser.
For a second, my fingers hover over the keys. The trust document, the extra girl in the portrait, the staff whispering about “the other little girl,” Evelyn’s carefully choreographed cliffside tragedy—all of it presses against the backs of my eyes. My heart taps a faster rhythm.
I type: Mercer Hospital adoption scandal.
The results pour in: not what I want.
The top hits are glossy features from regional magazines and national philanthropy sites, all praising the Mercer Foundation’s “innovative family support programs” and “ethical adoption partnerships.” Article thumbnails show Evelyn with her professional smile, hands folded at podiums, the hospital wing gleaming in the background. One piece calls Harbor Glen “a beacon on the Sound, where medicine and mercy meet.”
I snort and click anyway.
“The Mercer family has transformed Harbor Glen Memorial into a model for community-focused care,” I read under a photo of Robert in a tux, Evelyn on his arm. “From the annual Light the Harbor boat parade fundraiser to groundbreaking neonatal programs, their generosity saves lives every day.”
Halfway down the article, there’s a section labeled Adoption Success Stories. A photo shows a line of families in front of a donor wall, kids grinning, parents clutching them tightly. The caption mentions “discreet coordination with partner agencies to ensure at-risk infants find loving homes.”
Nothing about sealed records. Nothing about second daughters.
I back up and refine the search: “Harbor Glen Memorial” lawsuit, then “Mercer Foundation” malpractice, then “Mercer Hospital” missing records.
The screen fills with more PR: press releases about awards, PDF newsletters, an article about the hospital’s infection control protocols that reads like a love letter to disinfectant. A few legal notices pop up—standard malpractice settlements, nothing unusual for a hospital this size.
I scroll, scroll, scroll. The further down the results list I go, the more the links feel… curated. Local bloggers gushing about the Light the Harbor parade and which yacht carried which socialite. Photo galleries of donors clinking champagne glasses on decks lit with fairy lights.
I lean closer, the blue light washing my hands a pale, exhausted color.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Different door.”
I’m not a lawyer, but I know how to move through systems. Years of social work taught me how to coax information from clunky portals and half-funded databases, how to find the line where privacy ends and public record begins.
I open a new tab and navigate to a legal database I used back when I advocated for kids in foster care. The guest Wi-Fi is strong; pages snap open quickly. I log in with the username and password I never bothered to change after grad school, fingers adjusting automatically to the familiar pattern.
In the search bar, I type: Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital and narrow the jurisdiction to New York. I set the date range for thirty years back, then push it further, to forty. Lydia would have been… I do the math in my head and add a few years on either side, just in case.
Case titles list out: malpractice, contract disputes, a slip-and-fall in the parking lot. My shoulders relax a fraction. Hospitals attract lawsuits. Most are mundane in their own grim way.
I add adoption, guardianship, termination of parental rights to the search terms.
The list shrinks.
Several hits remain, but when I click them, I get variations on the same message:
This record has been sealed by court order.
Document unavailable. Please contact the clerk of court for further information.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. I scroll, chasing crumbs.
One entry catches my eye—filed in the early nineties, close to the era that would line up with Riley’s future. I don’t know her name yet, but the air in the room shifts, charged with possibilities I can’t name.
The case summary references a “confidential juvenile matter involving Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital and the Mercer Foundation.” The rest is redacted, a long gray bar where a more modest system would simply leave blank space.
I try to open the associated documents. The database thinks for a full ten seconds, little wheel turning, before flashing another block:
Access denied under sealing statute.
“Of course,” I whisper.
My pulse kicks up again, not with triumph, but with recognition. There’s a shape here, a negative space. The articles and donor walls shout about saving children. The legal records fall silent exactly where those saved children would leave a paper trail.
I adjust the search again, smoothing my breath. I pivot to a more general court records portal, one that lets me search by the hospital’s address instead of its name. A few older, scanned dockets appear, their text fuzzy like photocopies of photocopies.
I click an entry dated the year Lydia died.
The document loads in a separate window, the page yellowed at the edges in the scan. The first lines are readable: a negligence claim involving a boat rental company at the Harbor Glen marina and an unnamed minor. My skin prickles. There’s mention of “weather advisory warnings” and “failure to restrict access to docks under hazardous conditions.”
I scroll, hungry for more, but halfway down the page the text blurs into nothing. The PDF just… stops. The rest of the pages in the file are blank, each stamped in tiny type at the bottom: Page intentionally omitted.
“Seriously?” I pull my hands back from the trackpad, flex them, then dive into the file info. The index says there should be eight pages. I have three, two half-legible. The rest are ghosts.
Somewhere downstairs, a clock chimes nine, the sound warped by distance and thick walls.
I open another tab and try a different angle: the hospital’s own site. The Mercer crest greets me on the homepage, the stylized wave curling under a banner that reads Harbor Glen Memorial Hospital & Mercer Foundation Wing. A carousel of images slides by—smiling nurses, tiny infants in incubators, Evelyn at a ribbon cutting ceremony, the Light the Harbor parade framed in perfect twilight.
I click on “History.”
The timeline glides down: hospital founded in the fifties, expansion in the seventies, “new era of community partnership under the leadership of Robert and Evelyn Mercer” in the late eighties. The language is glossy, full of phrases like holistic care and family-centered approach.
Under “Family Programs,” there’s a section about adoption support. It mentions counseling, post-placement services, coordination with agencies. It does not mention how records are kept, or sealed, or lost.
I scroll to the bottom, looking for a site map, a privacy notice—anything that might hint at how tightly they control their digital footprint. In small print, I find: All inquiries regarding historical records and adoption-related documentation must be submitted through the Mercer Foundation Legal Office.
No email, no form. Just a physical address and a phone number that probably routes to a secretary with a velvet chainsaw for a voice.
I open another tab and type “Mercer Hospital adoptions” in quotes. The same PR pages circle back, like a cul-de-sac built from flattering adjectives. I widen the search to include “Harbor Glen adoption closed records” and end up in state statutes about confidentiality, dense paragraphs that knot my brain.
My neck aches. I realize I’ve been hunched forward, shoulders curled in, chin jutting toward the screen. I force myself to lean back against the headboard, the wooden frame cool through the pillow.
Down on Main Street, people probably sip peppermint lattes and gossip about which families will host the best Light the Harbor watch parties, which yachts will be the brightest. Their kids will grow up seeing the Mercer crest on donor plaques and tote bags and scholarship brochures, absorbing the story that the Mercers saved this town.
I know they saved some lives.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t steal others.
I take a breath and try one more route: archived local newspapers. The interface is old, clunky, a far cry from the Mercer site’s polished ease. I search by date and keyword, pulling up microfilm scans from the year Lydia died.
There’s a three-paragraph story about a “tragic boating accident involving a prominent Harbor Glen family.” Names are withheld “out of respect for privacy,” but anyone here would have known. The article notes one child dead, no survivors unaccounted for, no other minors mentioned.
That single line presses down on me. I picture a second girl on that boat, a wave swallowing her into paperwork instead of water.
I keep digging, hands moving faster now. The database suddenly stutters, then cuts out. A red banner appears across the top of the page.
Connection lost.
“Come on,” I mutter. I check the Wi-Fi symbol—full bars. Other sites still load when I test them. It’s just this archive that refuses to reopen.
I try three more times. Same error.
The skin between my shoulder blades tightens, a knot drawing itself.
A soft knock on the door makes me jump. My laptop nearly slides off my knees.
“Yeah?” My voice cracks slightly.
Daniel peeks in, hair damp from a shower, wearing a Mercer Foundation T-shirt that probably came from one of those boat parade fundraisers. The stylized wave logo sits right over his heart.
“Hey,” he says. “You okay up here? I haven’t seen you since you went out with my mom.”
“Yeah. Just… tired,” I say, which is true in all the wrong ways. I lower the laptop screen a fraction without fully closing it. The glow paints a wedge of light across the duvet.
He steps inside and leans against the doorframe, crossing his arms. The familiar smell of his soap mixes with the room’s starch and polish, grounding me for a second.
“I was going to warn you about the Wi-Fi,” he says. “Has it been weird?”
A chill tiptoes up my spine. “Weird how?”
He shrugs, casual. “Just… spotty sometimes. And the IT guys my parents use are kind of intense. They monitor traffic pretty tightly, especially on the guest network. Security concerns, they say. A couple years ago, there was some attempted hack on the hospital servers, and since then they’ve been paranoid. So if anything cuts out unexpectedly, that’s why.”
He says it kindly, like he’s reassuring me about a squeaky floorboard, not telling me that every search I just ran might have pinged on someone’s dashboard downstairs.
I force my face to stay loose. “Monitor traffic?” I ask, aiming for mildly interested. “You mean like… making sure nobody’s downloading torrents?”
He laughs. “Yeah, that, and making sure nobody’s trying to access sensitive stuff without permission. Hospital records, internal files, that kind of thing. They have alerts set up, I think. Don’t worry, they’re not reading your emails or anything.”
My throat dries. I swallow anyway.
“Right,” I say. “Of course.”
He straightens and crosses to the bed, perching on the edge near my feet. His weight dips the mattress, jostling the laptop. The screen tilts, and the words connection lost flash again before the display times out and goes dark.
“I hate that you have to deal with all this fortress stuff,” he says. “You should be able to just relax here, enjoy the holidays. Next year we’ll get our own place for Christmas. Neutral ground.”
His hand finds my calf through the duvet, thumb rubbing a small circle. The gesture is intimate, familiar, and yet something in me stays braced.
“Your parents’ fortress keeps a lot of people safe,” I say. “That’s what everyone in town says.”
He smiles, proud and weary at once. “They do a lot of good, Han. The hospital, the foundation—you’ve seen the articles. They’re not perfect, but they’ve literally kept that place from going under. People in Harbor Glen know that.”
“People who cross them know things too,” I say lightly. “From what I hear.”
He winces. “Okay, that’s… not entirely unfair. My mom can be… intense about loyalty. But she’s not some Bond villain.” He nudges my ankle with his knuckles. “Hey. You’re safe here, all right? IT weirdness and all.”
Safe. The word hangs between us, flimsy against the weight of sealed records and missing pages.
“Sure,” I say. “I just don’t want to accidentally trip some alarm by Googling the wrong thing. I already feel like I’m going to be tackled every time I walk past the office door.”
He laughs, but it lands a little off. “If the IT guys ping anything, it’ll go to some outsourced firm, not to my mom personally. She doesn’t have time to spy on everyone’s browser history.”
“You say that like you’re completely sure,” I say.
He hesitates.
That half-second answers for him.
“She’s busy, Hannah,” he says finally. “Running the foundation, dealing with board members, planning Light the Harbor. She’s not interested in whether you’re watching baking videos in here.”
“Good thing I’m not watching baking videos,” I mutter.
“Then what are you watching?”
I slide the laptop the rest of the way closed. The click sounds louder than the door did earlier.
“Just reading about the hospital,” I say. “Trying to understand your world a little better. All the history.”
His shoulders soften, pleased. “Yeah? That’s… that’s nice.”
“Yeah,” I say, fighting the urge to chew my lip. “Lots of articles. Lots of boat parade photos.”
“Welcome to Harbor Glen,” he jokes. “We measure moral worth in yacht decorations.”
He leans down and kisses my forehead, lingering just long enough that I want to believe I’m imagining the tiny flinch when I don’t respond quickly enough.
“Don’t stay up too late spiraling down Google holes,” he says as he stands. “The Wi-Fi will probably kick you off anyway.”
“Right,” I say. “Wouldn’t want to trip any alarms.”
He gives me a look I can’t quite read, half amused, half puzzled, then leaves. The door closes with a soft thud.
I sit very still for a moment, listening to his footsteps fade along the hallway. When the house swallows the sound, I open the laptop again, but I don’t reconnect.
The black screen reflects my face and, behind it, the faint outline of the room. A Mercer-crest throw blanket draped over a chair. A framed print of the harbor with the hospital perched on its hill. The edges of the reflection warp slightly, the glass turning everything just a bit unreal.
I think of the sealed case files, the blank pages, the “intentionally omitted” text. Of the IT firm flagging searches about Harbor Glen Memorial adoption scandals and sending reports to someone whose name I don’t know.
Love and harm, saved lives and stolen stories, all bundled into the same data trail.
I close the laptop gently and slide it under the bed, out of sight. The carpet brushes my knuckles, smelling faintly of vacuum dust and whatever cleaner the staff uses.
Lying back against the pillows, I stare up at the ceiling and count my breaths, slow and steady, while the Sound pounds the rocks below like a heartbeat.
If the Mercers control what appears on donor walls and hospital websites, if they can seal or erase what doesn’t fit, I need to ask a different question.
Not what is online about them.
But who, out there, is angry enough or hurt enough to be digging into those missing records from the outside too—and how long before whoever monitors this fortress realizes I’m looking for them.