Page 30 of The Other Mother

NOT EVERYTHING IS LOST

T he ping of my phone cuts through the predawn silence.

I jolt awake, heart hammering against my ribs.

Eva stirs in her bassinet, letting out one of those soft, dreamy sighs that used to comfort me.

Now it just reminds me of all the sounds I might have missed, all the moments that belonged to someone else.

Check your mailbox.

That's it. No signature. No explanation. Just five words that make my stomach clench.

I slip out of bed, my bare feet hitting the cold hardwood.

The house feels different in the early morning, like it's holding its breath.

Outside the bedroom window, the desert landscape stretches endlessly under a gray sky.

The mountains in the distance look like sleeping giants, and our cul-de-sac sits perfectly still.

No footsteps on the gravel. No car engines.

No signs of life except for the automatic sprinklers whispering across the neighbor's perfect lawn.

I pad to the front door, unlock it slowly. The desert air hits my skin, dry and sharp. It smells like creosote and dust. Sometimes I miss the salt air so much it physically hurts.

The mailbox sits at the end of our stone pathway, sleek black metal that Adam picked because it looked "modern and intentional." Now it feels ominous. I lift the lid with trembling fingers.

It’s empty except for a small padded envelope, unmarked, tucked into the back corner.

Back inside, I lock the door behind me and lean against it. The envelope feels light in my hands, almost weightless. Inside: a flash drive. It’s silver, the kind you can buy at any drugstore for ten dollars.

I glance toward the nursery. Eva hasn't stirred. Adam's still asleep, one arm flung over his face like he's trying to block out the world.

My laptop sits on the kitchen table, still open from last night when I was researching everything I could find about emergency custody transfers.

Most of the articles were legal jargon, but one phrase kept appearing: "best interest of the child.

" I'd stared at those words until they blurred together, wondering who gets to decide what's best.

I plug in the flash drive. My reflection stares back from the black screen, ghostly and hollow-eyed. I look like someone I don't recognize anymore. Someone who's been living in the spaces between truth and lies for so long that I've forgotten which side I belong on.

One file appears:

C-Assignment Footage / Intake Day 4

My finger hovers over the mouse. Once I click, there's no going back to the version of myself who could still pretend everything was normal. The version who could still believe that motherhood was supposed to feel like coming home instead of like stepping into someone else's life.

I click.

The video loads with that grainy, static quality of security footage. Black and white. Time-stamped in blocky digital numbers. It's a hospital lobby, the same one where I remember signing discharge papers. But this isn't discharge. This is something else entirely.

There I am.

Sitting in a wheelchair, slumped forward like a rag doll.

My hair hangs in my face, and I'm wearing a hospital gown that's too big, the sleeves swallowing my hands.

I look so small. So broken. My face is streaked with tears, and I'm crying in a way that looks silent and desperate, like someone who's already screamed herself hoarse.

A nurse approaches the front desk. Her movements are brisk, efficient. She slides a clipboard across the surface toward me.

I watch myself sign something.

My signature is shaky, childlike. Nothing like the careful penmanship I've always been proud of. I sign without reading, without looking up, without asking questions. Just my name on a line.

The camera angle shifts slightly. Through the glass doors, I see movement. A commotion.

Mara.

She's there, behind the doors, and she's screaming. Her mouth is wide, her face contorted with a rage and grief so raw it makes my chest ache. I can't hear her through the glass, but I can read her lips.

"That's my baby! You gave her to the wrong person! Give her back!"

Two security guards appear. Large men in dark uniforms. They grab her arms, pull her away from the doors. She fights them, her body twisting in their arms. Her eyes are locked on something inside the lobby. On me. On the baby I'm not even sure I'm holding.

The guards drag her out of frame, and she's gone.

This is an extended version of the one Lex found, but it’s similar.

I sit there in my wheelchair, signing papers, completely oblivious to the woman being dragged away behind me. The woman whose life was being dismantled while mine was being artificially reconstructed.

I pause the video. My hands are shaking so hard I can barely control the mouse. I don't remember any of this. Not the wheelchair. Not the crying. Not Mara behind those doors.

How can I not remember ?

I rewind, play it again. Watch myself sign that paper over and over. Each time, I look more like a stranger. I’m sedated and not in control of my own decisions.

But then I see that there’s something more.

Then I see a second file in the folder. I almost missed it. The title makes my blood turn cold:

Custodial Risk Matrix – Tier 3 Mothers

I open it.

It's a spreadsheet. Rows and rows of anonymized patient numbers, but the categories beside them are crystal clear. Clinical and brutal in their efficiency:

Psychological flags

Limited family support

No legal advocate present

Verbal consent obtained / Sedation confirmed

Single parent / Recent loss

Financial vulnerability assessed

Some rows are marked: Status: FINALIZED / CHILD REASSIGNED

Others: Status: MONITORING / PENDING EVALUATION

I scroll faster, my heart pounding against my ribs. There. One entry that makes me clap a hand over my mouth:

Transfer Partner: B. Matthews – Referred

B. Matthews. Not A.

I was Claire Bernard before I married Adam. B. Matthews could mean I was referred under my married name but flagged with my previous identity. Or it could mean something else entirely.

Did they pick me? Did they evaluate, categorize and select me? Why?

I scroll to the top of the spreadsheet again and notice a second tab: “ Tier 2 Pending – Cross-Review Required.” There are dozens of rows in each tier. Dates. Flagged traits. Referral codes. Several marked: “ Partner Notified – Legal Onboarded” or “ Placement In Progress.”

Some even list agencies I don’t recognize: Silver Rock Partners , BrightStart Domestic Advocates , J.H. Consulting.

There’s nothing random. This isn’t an accident. It’s a system.

It’s a deliberate choice based on my profile: recent loss of my mother, isolated in a new city, husband who works long hours, history of pregnancy complications. They saw my grief, my desperation, my willingness to sign anything if it meant not losing another person I loved.

And Mara? She was probably on the other side of this equation. The mother whose child would be reassigned to someone more "suitable."

I close the laptop and walk to the kitchen window. The sun is starting to rise over the mountains, painting the sky in shades of pink and gold that should be beautiful but instead feel like a mockery. How can the world look so normal when everything I thought I knew has been turned inside out?

I’m at the front window when the garage across the cul-de-sac shudders open. Sharon Henderson steps out in a thin robe and running shoes, tugging her recycling bin to the curb. She spots me and gives a small, awkward half-wave.

I open the door before I can talk myself out of it and cross the street barefoot. “Sharon? Can I ask you something?”

Her smile is tight. “Sure.”

“A few weeks ago, I asked about Ring footage from the day we brought Eva home.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, you said that your husband is big on privacy but this is very important. Is there any way you still have it? I saw a gray infant seat on your garage shelf and I keep thinking I’m misremembering something. I won’t share it with anyone, I promise.”

She goes pink in the cheeks, then exhales. “Sorry, I was being a bit… evasive. My sister is doing IVF and the courier is dropping off deliveries here. We use my address because I’m home to sign, and I didn’t want that showing up on the neighborhood Ring feed.”

“So, you still have it? It didn’t auto-delete?”

“Yes.

The tightness in my chest loosens a notch.

“Adam knocked the morning you two were discharged from the hospital. Your fancy one got delayed in shipping. We loaned him the gray one for a couple of days. You brought it back once the white one arrived.”

My face gets hot. “I’m sorry. I’ve been?—”

“I know.” Her voice softens. “I’ll text you the video clip so you can stop wondering.”

A moment later, my phone buzzes. In the grainy Ring frame, a white cooler-sized tank is carted to their door. I scroll forward a few minutes and then see Adam carrying the gray seat out of their driveway.

Sharon watches me watch it. “You okay?”

“Working on it,” I say. And I mean it more than I expect. “Thank you.”

Back at home, my phone buzzes again. A news alert.

Local Woman Found Dead in Suspected Suicide

Mara Vasquez, 34.

I hold the phone with both hands, shocked. The article is short, perfunctory. There are no quotes from family members or a mention of an autopsy. Just the basic facts delivered in that clinical, newspaper tone that makes tragedy sound routine.

There's a photo. Mara's purse on the ground, contents spilled across concrete. Her wallet. Some loose change. A crumpled tissue. But no phone. Nothing that might contain evidence or communications.

I can’t believe what I just read. Did she really kill herself?

Why? My mind starts to spin. I know that she was hurting but she was also so eager to get to the truth.

If Eva is Mara’s baby, wouldn’t she want her back?

I just can’t believe that she would do something like that.

On the other hand, I didn’t really know her.

I check the envelope of the flash drive again. When I tip it over, a small piece of paper falls out.

"Find the file. Not everything is lost."

I stare at the flash drive in my hand. She sent this. Mara, who spent her last days fighting for the truth while everyone around her called her crazy. She found this evidence, got it to me, and then ...

"And now she's dead," I whisper to the empty kitchen.

Or silenced.

Behind me, Eva starts to cry. That soft, insistent wail that means she's waking up hungry and needs me. Needs the woman she thinks is her mother. The woman who might be the only mother she'll ever know, even if I'm not the mother she was born to.

I lift her from the bassinet. She settles against my chest, her tiny fist curling around my finger. This gesture that should feel like love, like belonging, like the most natural thing in the world.

Instead, it feels like evidence of a crime I didn't know I was committing.

The early morning light streams through the nursery window, casting long shadows across the floor.

In the distance, I can hear Adam's alarm starting to buzz.

Soon he'll wake up, shower, make coffee. Then he’ll head off to the office to build houses for other families who get to live in the simple, uncomplicated world where children belong to the people who bring them home from the hospital.

But as I stand here holding Eva, feeling her warm weight against my chest, one thought cuts through everything else, if they did this to us, how many other mothers are out there right now, holding children who were never meant to be theirs?