After she went upstairs, I reread the adoption notice.
The agency’s license number looked wrong because it contained one extra digit.
I compared it with a second article about Lantern House and found two numbers used in consecutive years.
That difference could have been harmless, a clerical correction or a change in registration.
It could also lead us somewhere useful.
I emailed Dana a question rather than drawing my own conclusion.
Then I looked across the fence at Martha’s dark kitchen.
The woman who had entered my home was staying with her sister while the case proceeded.
Her house seemed abandoned, but somebody had left a porch lamp on.
I wondered whether she was afraid of me, Graham Alden, or the consequences of finally saying the truth aloud.
My phone lit up with a message from an unknown number.
It contained a photograph of my mother’s sewing tin.
Below the image were six words.
“You were never supposed to find it.”
I saved the message and called Sosa again.
Dana arranged for the yellow envelope to be examined without damaging the contents.
It had been released to me after the evidence technician completed the photographs and documented how it was found.
At Dana’s office, we placed it on a clean table and used a letter opener along the already weakened flap.
Inside were three thin sheets of paper and a small piece of green cloth.
The first page was a delivery receipt from Lantern House Services.
Its recipient was listed as Evelyn Pierce, but the infant’s name had been replaced by the designation Patient B-17.
The second sheet was a carbon copy of a discharge notice dated May 19, 1988.
It showed that a baby identified as B-17 had been moved from the clinic to temporary foster care.
The third sheet contained a handwritten line signed with the initials M.Q.
“Do not process the death report until this receipt is returned.”
I read it twice because the word death belonged in a different universe from an adoption announcement.
Dana asked me to put down the paper before I tore it accidentally.
She explained that the notation could concern another child, could have been changed later, and might not establish any deception by itself.
Still, the initials matched Marianne Quinn, the administrator pictured in the newspaper.
The green cloth had a tiny embroidered star and an unfinished seam.
I recognized the stitch because my mother had taught me how to make it on Christmas ornaments.
