“And gave you a baby?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Nolan sat down.
His hands were shaking.
“She told me there had been a problem with the paperwork.”
“What paperwork?”
“The baby’s identification bracelet.”
My heart began pounding.
“What does that mean?”
Nolan looked directly at me.
“They said there had been another emergency delivery that night.”
I couldn’t speak.
“A baby had been born alive.”
I whispered, “Whose baby?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you have her?”
“She said the baby was supposed to be transferred.”
“Transferred where?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“And the envelope?”
Nolan’s expression changed.
“What did Cody tell you?”
“He saw you give someone money.”
Nolan shook his head.
“It wasn’t my money.”
I stared at him.
“Whose was it?”
“The hospital administrator’s.”
My skin prickled.
“What?”
“He gave me the envelope.”
“Why?”
“To pay someone.”
“For what?”
Nolan’s voice dropped.
“To keep quiet.”
I felt dizzy.
“About what?”
He looked at me.
“About Maisie.”
Before I could respond, there was a knock at the front door.
Three slow knocks.
Nolan froze.
Cody whispered:
“That’s her.”
I turned.
“Who?”
“The woman from the hospital.”
The knocking came again.
Three times.
Nolan stood.
“Jenna, don’t open that door.”
“Why?”
“Because if it’s who I think it is…”
He didn’t finish.
The door handle began to turn.
And then a woman’s voice came from the other side.
“Jenna?”
I knew that voice.
I had heard it before.
At the hospital.
The night Maisie was born.
My hand went to my mouth.
Because suddenly I remembered something I had spent two weeks trying not to remember.
A nurse leaning over me.
A frightened expression.
And one sentence whispered before everything went black:
“Your baby is alive.”
I looked at Nolan.
He looked terrified.
Then the woman outside spoke again.
“Jenna, you need to let me in.”
Her voice broke.
“Because your daughter is alive.”
Part 3 — “The Truth About Maisie”
I couldn’t move.
The words seemed to hang in the hallway.
Your daughter is alive.
Cody’s fingers tightened around mine.
Nolan stood completely still.
Then he whispered:
“Don’t open the door.”
I looked at him.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You knew she might be alive.”
“I suspected.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I didn’t know what to believe.”
I stepped toward the door.
Nolan grabbed my wrist.
“Jenna, please.”
I pulled away.
“If there is even a one-percent chance that our daughter is alive, I’m opening that door.”
I unlocked it.
The woman standing outside looked exhausted.
She was perhaps in her fifties, wearing a plain coat, her hair pulled back, her eyes swollen from crying.
I recognized her immediately.
She was the nurse from the hospital.
“Marianne?”
She nodded.
“Can I come in?”
I stepped aside.
She entered.
The moment she saw Cody, she covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”
Cody stared at her.
“You remember me?”
“Yes.”
She knelt in front of him.
“You shouldn’t have seen what you saw.”
“But I did.”
“I know.”
She looked at me.
“I’ve been trying to find the courage to tell you the truth.”
My voice shook.
“Start talking.”
Marianne looked at Nolan.
He nodded.
She took a breath.
“The night your daughter was born, there were two emergency deliveries.”
I frowned.
“I don’t understand.”
“You were rushed into surgery because of severe bleeding. At almost the same time, another woman was brought into the maternity ward.”
“Who?”
“A young woman named Rebecca.”
My heart stopped.
“The woman Nolan mentioned?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?”
“She gave birth to a baby girl.”
I stared at her.
“And Maisie?”
Marianne’s eyes filled with tears.
“That is where everything went wrong.”
She explained that during the chaos, several patients were moved between rooms.
A nurse had accidentally attached the wrong temporary identification label to one of the newborns.
The mistake was discovered almost immediately.
But by then, another crisis had begun.
I had lost a dangerous amount of blood.
My condition deteriorated.
The medical team focused on keeping me alive.
At the same time, Rebecca suffered complications after delivery.
“She was unconscious,” Marianne said.
“So both mothers were unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“And the babies?”
“Both babies were alive.”
My knees weakened.
I grabbed the back of a chair.
“Then why did you tell us Maisie died?”
