The Wrong Girl

6

Maybe there was nothing to find.

Hush, Ella, she shushed herself, propping one elbow on Ms. Finch’s desk and tucking a stray lock of hair back into the bobby pin. She’d been Lillian’s eyes and ears for the past however many years, not that she’d ever call her Lillian to her face. Even those times when she’d been invited for tea at Ms. Finch’s beautiful home.

Anyway. Lillian always kept every piece of paper, and had told Ella, again and again, that documentation was the key to everything. If there was something to find, Lillian would have it.

Ella turned another page in the thick manila folder she’d pulled from the bank of wooden file cabinets along the back wall. Birth certificate for baby girl Beerman, a certified copy. Father’s name, not listed. Audrey Rose Beerman, dark eyes, dark hair, deemed healthy, all her shots. Letter from the birth mother. Court order. A revision. A few photos in an envelope-swaddled infant, toddler in a pinafore and floppy hat. Nothing odd, nothing strange, nothing she hadn’t seen dozens of times in dozens of family folders.

Was that a noise in the hallway? She looked up from her paperwork, fingering the loop of one earring, her heart twisting for a beat or two. She wasn’t supposed to be here on a Sunday afternoon. She’d get in trouble if anyone found out.

A noise? No. Only the creaking of the old building. Chilly, too, with the heat down. She buttoned her thin cardigan, wished she’d worn jeans instead of her corduroy skirt.

The call from that Tucker Cameron woman was, well, upsetting. She’d taken it the day before yesterday, Friday, last call of the afternoon. She’d already had her coat and muffler on, almost hadn’t picked up the receiver.

She sighed. She never could resist the phone. What if it was a match? Wouldn’t want to miss that. She’d answered, then tried to understand what the woman was saying, her words coming too fast to comprehend.

The wrong girl?

Impossible. The Brannigan was in the business of making families. Nothing “wrong” about that. Ella reassured the woman, as best she could, there was no mistake. Someone would call her back.

Should she have reported it? At five on a Friday? What good would that have done? Monday would be soon enough. Lillian wouldn’t be angry with her.

She hoped.

Ella eyed Lillian’s desk, the silver container of massed white roses next to a silver-framed photo collection of the families she’d created. Lillian was a saint, no question. Still, she was pushing fifty, fifty-five, maybe, and someday she’d retire. Ella would be ready to take the big desk.

She turned another page of the Beerman file. There was the R and R request from the mother, Carlyn Parker Beerman, asking the Brannigan to rescind her initial stop order of the closed adoption and release information requested by the birth daughter. Date of issue… Ella squinted at the page. Smudged. But clear enough, three months ago. She’d heard Ms. Finch phone the daughter herself.

She leaned back in Ms. Finch’s puffy chair. Getting to make the Call was one of the things she loved most. They both did, she and Lillian. The call where you know you are changing someone’s life. Two peoples’ lives. Two strangers, two people who probably thought about each other every day, maybe missed each other every day, would finally be together. After all those years, a mother meets her daughter. A mother meets her grown-up son. A father sees his child for the first time. They recognize themselves in each other’s eyes. They realize they’re not alone.

A sacred moment. That’s how Ella thought of it. Maybe it would even happen to her, someday. If she never found her own mother, she’d at least spend her life putting families back together.

There wasn’t always a happy ending, that she knew. You can’t choose your family, and sometimes people regretted reality. Even wished they’d never known the truth. That wasn’t her responsibility. At the Brannigan, all they did was answer requests. After that, families were on their own.

But this Audrey Rose Beerman thing. Ella stared at the call log she’d filled out two days ago. Audrey Rose Beerman, because that’s who she most certainly was, insisting she wasn’t Audrey Rose Beerman.

Why would she say that? It was impossible.

Ella stood almost before she realized it. Her fingertips brushed the slick desk, the manila file sliding to the carpet, papers inside fanning out on the floor. That was a sound. It was.