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Priya leaned over the file.
“There’s a placement name.”
Rowan’s heart pounded.
The adoptive family listed was sealed under a confidentiality code, but an internal memo had been tucked behind the medical records.
Temporary placement approved with Jonathan and Abigail Mercer pending final review.
Priya inhaled.
“I know that name.”
Rowan looked at her.
“Abigail Mercer runs a children’s music school in Brentwood. Her husband is a pediatric physical therapist. They lost a baby years ago.”
Priya’s expression softened.
“Rowan, they may not know.”
“Know what?”
“That Lily was taken.”
The words changed everything.
Until that moment, Rowan had imagined villains behind every door. But now he pictured a couple holding a fragile infant, believing they had been chosen to love her.
Megan had been robbed.
But perhaps Lily had not been unloved.
That thought steadied him.
“Can we go there?” he asked.
Priya checked the file.
“Not tonight. We need to do this carefully. If the Mercers are innocent, we protect them too. If Lily is with them, the priority is not drama. It’s her well-being.”
Rowan closed the folder slowly.
“Megan needs to know.”
“Yes,” Priya said. “From you.”
At the cottage near Thompson’s Station, Megan opened the door before Rowan knocked twice.
Her face was pale with worry, her hair tied loosely at the nape of her neck. Behind her, the boys slept in the crib beneath a soft yellow lamp.
“You found something,” she said.
Rowan could not speak at first.
Megan gripped the doorframe.
“Is she alive?”
He nodded.
The sound Megan made was not a sob exactly. It was breath returning after a year underwater.
“She was placed with a family in Brentwood,” he said quickly. “Jonathan and Abigail Mercer. Priya thinks they may not know the truth.”
Megan pressed both hands to her mouth.
“She’s alive?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Her knees buckled slightly, and Rowan reached out without thinking.
He stopped before touching her.
Megan saw.
Then she stepped forward and let him steady her by the elbow.
For a moment, they stood that way in the doorway, not husband and wife, not healed, not whole, but two parents held upright by the same impossible hope.
“What if she doesn’t know me?” Megan asked.
Rowan’s eyes burned.
“She’s a baby.”
“What if she cries when I hold her?”
“Then we’ll comfort her.”
The word we hung between them.
Megan did not correct him.
The next morning, under Priya’s guidance, they went to the Mercers’ home.
It was a modest brick house on a quiet street lined with maple trees. Wind chimes moved softly on the porch. A small wooden sign near the door read:
Music lessons today — please ring gently.
Rowan stood beside Megan, close enough to support her, far enough not to crowd her. Priya and Judge Reed waited near the driveway.
Megan rang the bell.
A woman in her early forties opened the door. She had auburn hair, tired kind eyes, and a soft cardigan dusted with flour.
The moment she saw Priya behind them, her smile faded.
“Can I help you?”
Priya stepped forward.
“Mrs. Mercer, my name is Priya Sen. We need to speak with you and your husband about a child placed in your care through Hawthorne.”
Abigail’s hand went to her throat.
From inside the house came a baby’s laugh.
Megan went completely still.
Abigail noticed.
Something changed in her face—not guilt, but fear.
“Jonathan,” she called, her voice shaking.
A tall man appeared behind her, holding a little girl in a pale green onesie.
Lily.
Rowan knew before anyone said her name.
Not because of the blond curls, though they were there.
Not because of the Bellamy crease between her brows, which appeared when she stared at strangers with solemn suspicion.
He knew because Megan made a sound like her heart had recognized its missing piece.
The baby turned toward the sound.
For a moment, the world narrowed to a porch, a doorway, and a child held between two families.
Megan whispered:
“Lily.”
Abigail’s eyes filled instantly.
“What is happening?”
Priya spoke gently.
“We believe Lily was placed with you under fraudulent circumstances.”
Jonathan tightened his arms around the baby protectively.
“No. We have legal papers.”
“I know,” Priya said. “We need to review them. We are not here to take her from your arms in fear. We are here because her birth mother has been looking for her for a year.”
Abigail looked at Megan.
Megan could barely stand.
“I didn’t give her away,” Megan said, each word trembling but clear. “I never gave her away.”
Abigail began to cry.
Jonathan looked down at Lily, then at Megan, then at Rowan.
“They told us her mother had died.
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