Part 2The Day I Became A Secret Mother

The next morning, I drove to Clearriver Community Hospital.

According to the birth certificate, Milo Brody had been delivered there two years ago. The records department was located in the basement, behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass.

I stood there, feeling like a ghost in my own life. Legally, I was the mother of this child. Yet, I had to present my ID and sign three different consent forms just to look at my own supposed medical records.

The clerk behind the desk clacked away on her keyboard. "Alright, I see the delivery file from October of 2021."

She printed a two-page summary and slid it under the glass.

Patient Name: Naomi Pendleton.

Age: 26.

Admission: Active labor.

Next of Kin present: Frances Pendleton (Mother).

Frances.

My mother’s name stared back at me in black ink.

The room seemed to tilt. My own mother had sat in that recovery room, watching another woman give birth under my name, and had signed her own signature as the grandmother of record.

"Is something wrong, sweetie?" the clerk asked, noticing my pale face.

"I need the full medical chart," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "The nursing notes, the physical descriptions. Everything."

"I can't release the full clinical notes without a court order or a formal legal dispute," she said, her expression softening with pity.

I pulled out the letter from the immigration office, the one threatening to revoke my visa application due to fraudulent declarations. "My identity was stolen," I told her, holding the paper against the glass. "If you don't give me those files, my attorney will subpoena this entire hospital by Monday morning."

Twenty minutes later, I had a copy of the intake chart.

I flipped past the vitals, the epidural dosage, the APGAR scores. On the third page, under the nurse's shift notes, a small hand-written line caught my eye:

Patient has a distinct, three-inch faded burn scar on the inner left wrist from childhood.

I dropped the paper onto my lap and lifted my left arm. My wrist was smooth, white, and completely unscarred.

But I knew that scar.

I had seen it a thousand times.

A summer afternoon when we were kids. A boiling kettle sliding off the stove. The sound of screaming, and my mother holding her favorite child, rocking her back and forth on the kitchen floor.

Audrey.

My stomach churned with a sudden, violent wave of nausea.

It was my sister.

My phone buzzed in my hand. It was my mother.

"Naomi," she said, her voice frantic, whispering as if someone might hear her. "Are you at the hospital?"

I leaned my head against the steering wheel, the vinyl cold against my forehead. "Why, Mom? Did you think the records wouldn't show your name?"

Silence stretched over the line, heavy and suffocating.

"Audrey is home," my mother said, her voice dropping all pretense. "She wants to see you. She’s missed you, Naomi. Please. Just come home and let’s talk about this as a family."

My sister, the golden child. The girl who could do no wrong, who had spent her entire life being shielded from the consequences of her own chaos while I paid the bills.

I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white. "I'm not coming home, Mom."