Chapter 3 - A Mother Named Priya
I pulled out my phone with hands that wouldn't stay steady, and scrolled to a photo of Eli at six months old. Then two years. Then four.
Priya pressed a hand over her mouth. "That's Milo."
"No. That's Eli."
She started crying without even trying to hide it. "Tell me where you got your son," I said, and the second it left my mouth I hated myself for the way it sounded.
She flinched like I'd hit her.
"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "He is your son."
"Yes." Her voice shook. "But I think I know why you're asking me that."
Eight years earlier, Priya had been working as a respiratory therapist at a different hospital across Fairhaven. She and her first husband had spent years trying and failing to adopt, watching two separate agency placements collapse right before they were finalized. Then a former patient advocate mentioned what she called an emergency private placement — a premature but stable newborn boy, birth mother critically ill, birth father overwhelmed and unable to cope.
The parents supposedly didn't want the adoption connected to the hospital at all, because the father was afraid the mother's family would try to interfere.
"That didn't strike you as strange?" I asked, my voice sharper than I meant it to be.
Priya closed her eyes. "Now? Completely. Then? I wanted a baby so badly I heard explanations where I should have heard warning sirens."
The adoption had gone through a small private legal office, not the hospital at all. She'd met a man who introduced himself only as the birth father's representative.
Not Grant. Someone else entirely.
"He said the father didn't want any direct contact."
"Did you ever meet the birth father?"
"No."
"The birth mother?"
"No."
"Did you sign court documents?"
"Yes." Priya's composure was cracking. "I swear to you, I did not buy a child."
"You paid something."
"A placement expense. Medical reimbursement. I believed every bit of it was legal."
"How much?"
She hesitated so long I thought she might not answer. "About thirty-eight thousand dollars, all told."
My stomach turned over.
"Who received that money?"
"Different accounts. Legal fees to the attorney. Medical reimbursement into an escrow account. Living expenses that were supposedly going to the birth mother."
I stared at her, feeling something cold settle into my chest. "The birth mother was unconscious in a hospital bed. She never saw a dime of that."
Priya broke down harder. "I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't know."
I believed her. I didn't fully understand why yet, but I did — maybe because she looked terrified of losing Milo, not terrified of getting caught.
"What documents did you get?"
"Birth certificate. Termination-of-rights papers. Adoption decree. Medical summary."
"What name was listed for the birth mother?"
Priya looked at me. "Diane Foster."
My name is Maren Sorensen. Not even close.
"Do you still have all of it?"
"Yes. I've kept every piece of paper about him since the day I brought him home."
"Can I see it?"
She glanced toward the door where our sons had disappeared. "Yes." Then, quietly but firmly: "But before we do anything else, I need to say something to you."
I waited.
"If Milo is biologically yours, I am not going to lie to him about it. But I'm also not going to let anyone walk into his life and act like the last eight years didn't happen. Do you understand me?"
I looked at her — really looked — and for the first time all day, something inside me settled instead of shattered.
"Good," I said.
She blinked. "What?"
May you like
"Good. Because whatever happened to me isn't his fault. And loving him for eight years isn't yours."
Her face crumpled. We cried together in that principal's office, two strangers who were both, somehow, this boy's mother.
