She surfed the web and discovered that it wasn’t unusual for a formula-fed newborn to lose five percent of her body weight after birth. But according to her chart, she’d lost twelve percent of her body weight.
Her mother’s biological daughter was the one who’d weighed eight pounds, one ounce. Leah had likely weighed close to seven pounds at birth.
Mom’s blood type was recorded here as type O. A Google search informed her that O was common. So was Leah’s blood type, A. Her dad had type B, which was more unusual. A few of the times he’d given blood when she was a kid, he’d taken her along. Those occasions had imprinted on her memory because . . . needles. Blood. “I’ve got to help out my fellow Bs,” he’d told her. Afterward, he’d winked and cajoled the staff into giving Leah a carton of juice and a package of saltines.
She located a chart listing how blood types descended from parents to children. Ah. It wasn’t possible for a type O mother and type B father to have a type A daughter.
She’d already known she wasn’t Erica and Todd Montgomery’s child. The DNA said so. Her improbable weight loss as an infant said so.
So why did this fresh confirmation lower onto her shoulders like a lead blanket?
She read back over every item—the doctor’s scrawl regarding the caesarean section, her mom’s blood pressure stats, the notes on the baby’s feeding times, the results of the pediatrician’s exam.
Her mother’s baby had been whisked from the delivery room to the nursery because of concerns over a rapid heartbeat. As far as Leah could tell, the baby’s heartbeat had stabilized quickly. The remainder of Mom’s stay at the hospital appeared ordinary.
Not a single detail pointed to the question of how. How had two babies been switched?
Leah tilted her head up. Trees conspired to crowd out most of the starry sky. It might not be possible to answer the question of how. But it should be possible to answer the question of who. Who were her mother and father?
She logged in at YourHeritage. Starting with the DNA matches that the site designated as her closest relatives, she’d been studying each person one by one. Many had opted to keep their information private. Some who’d made their family trees public had only used the site for genealogical purposes and therefore hadn’t included living relatives. Others had only traced one branch of their tree.
Borrowing and building on the research they’d made available, she’d been striving to assemble a master family tree for herself. It was laborious.
The site says this woman’s my second cousin. But how? Through whom? Who are her parents, siblings, and kids?
Given more time, however, she had faith that she’d be able to crack the code.
Two days later, she did.
Maybe.
She’d taken her computer on a breakfast date to The Grind Coffee Shop and was just finishing up a chai latte when she suddenly located a jackpot of a family tree.
It had not come from one of her closest DNA matches. It had come from a distant relation named Cheryl Brookside Patterson. An obvious overachiever and a woman after Leah’s own heart, Cheryl had made public the most thrillingly thorough family tree Leah had ever seen.
Section by section, Leah compared her fledgling tree with Cheryl’s enormous tree until—finally—she found the place where her tree overlaid with Cheryl’s tree exactly. If she slotted a man named Jonathan Brookside into her tree as her father, then the few matches she’d been able to determine fell into place.
Many of the people on Cheryl’s tree had been born in Connecticut. However, Jonathan had been born in Atlanta. He had no siblings. At the age of fifty-seven, he was certainly of the right generation to be her father.
It seemed she was . . . a Brookside.
No information beyond his birthdate and place of birth had been given. She ran a search for him at YourHeritage, then on Google, then on social media sites.
No hits, which frustrated her curiosity but did not detract from the fact that she now, very likely, had enough DNA data to justify a court order for Baby Girl Brookside’s records.
Leah wouldn’t presume to call her knowledge of music well rounded. When she was young, her parents had introduced her to the 1980s soundtrack of their high school years, and she’d never found songs she liked better.
However, she was familiar enough with TLC’s hit “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” to know the lyrics suggested that you shouldn’t go chasing waterfalls, but instead stick to the rivers and lakes you were used to.
Which was preposterous.
Case in point: She’d spent a glorious Friday morning chasing a waterfall at Tallulah Gorge State Park. She’d hiked from the rim down to the floor. From her current spot on a shaded rock, the river tumbled past, crystal blue and frothing white. A hundred or so yards away, Hurricane Falls cascaded over ancient rock and filled the air with an underlying drone of nature’s power.
She’d have missed all this if she’d stuck to the rivers and the lakes she was used to.
After unpacking the lunch she’d brought in her backpack, she checked her phone and found a new email from Sebastian’s attorney, Jenna Miles. Leah had called Jenna immediately after deducing that Jonathan Brookside was her father, and Jenna had wasted no time.
Leah opened the email, a smile growing as she read the contents.
Then she spent far too long formulating and proofreading a text message to Sebastian. She was determined that no person would ever, ever, receive an email or text from her riddled with typos.
Jenna just informed me that she was granted a court order. She’ll deliver it to Donna McKelvey at Magnolia Avenue Hospital within the hour and request that Baby Girl Brookside’s documents be made ready for my perusal on Tuesday. You’d asked me to keep you informed about upcoming meetings, and I’m upholding my end of the bargain. Thank you very much for securing Jenna’s services on my behalf.
She could only hope that the detective work she’d done to pinpoint the identity of her father had been sound. If it hadn’t been, the effort to secure a court order pertaining to a baby girl with the surname Brookside would be wasted when Magnolia Avenue Hospital informed them that said records did not exist.
She completed her hike and was backing out of the parking lot when her phone dinged. She pressed the brake as if on the verge of flattening a pedestrian, even though no one was nearby. Bobbled her phone. Then plucked it up and checked her texts.
Sure enough. From Sebastian.
Let me know when to meet you at the hospital on Tuesday. I’ll do my best to be there.
Please don’t feel duty-bound to attend.
I want to be there.
I’m sure your schedule is full, and I’m sure Jenna and I can handle it.
I’ll see you Tuesday.
Sebastian sent his text and swiveled his office chair so that his vision landed on the pictures that his patients’ parents had sent him. Smiling babies.
He understood hospital politics and procedures better than Leah and Jenna. It was justified, generous even, for him to attend the meeting in order to provide backup.
So why did he feel guilty?
He pressed from his office chair and headed toward the stairs that led to the PICU, one floor below.
He felt guilty because he didn’t know how much his desire to see her again was influencing his certainty that she needed him at the meeting. Did his desire to see her again account for twenty percent of his motivation to be present at the meeting? Fifty? Eighty?