They’d walked away because her file carried a flag none of them wanted to risk: RELATIVE SEARCH PENDING — POSSIBLE KINSHIP CLAIM.
A placement a bl*od relative might someday appear and contest.
Cautious families don’t adopt into that uncertainty. So five of them left her sitting alone in a playroom.
I didn’t understand why Mr. Prescott looked so stricken about a bureaucratic flag.
Then he turned to the third page.
It was Georgie’s original birth certificate — sealed, misfiled, left out of everything I’d been shown.
My eyes went down the page to the line for the mother’s name.
Laurel Barron.
My Laurel.
My daughter.
My hands started to shake, and I heard myself cry out, “Oh my God — how could they hide this from me? This is impossible.”
Georgie wasn’t a stranger’s child I’d rescued.
Georgie was my granddaughter.
And I had adopted her, by the pull of my own heart, without ever knowing.
