The Maid Was His Daughter's Real Mother

CHAPTER 2 - The Baby Who Never Died

Eight years earlier, Sophie had been twenty, pregnant and alone.

After her parents died, she entered St. Anne's Maternity Home, a charitable facility funded by the Hartwell Foundation.

Evelyn Hartwell personally visited the young mothers.

She promised Sophie medical care and temporary housing. In return, Sophie signed documents allowing the hospital to care for her baby during her recovery.

None of the documents mentioned adoption.

After the delivery, Sophie suffered severe complications and was heavily sedated.

When she awakened, her daughter was gone.

A clinic administrator told her that the baby had stopped breathing. Sophie asked to see the body, but Evelyn claimed it had already been transferred for burial.

Sophie spent years believing she had failed her child.

Meanwhile, Liam and his late wife, Caroline, had been waiting to adopt. Their first adoption arrangement had collapsed days before the birth.

Evelyn arrived at their home carrying a newborn girl.

She told them the biological mother had voluntarily surrendered the child and requested a closed adoption.

Liam never questioned her.

Every document appeared legal.

They named the baby Emma.

Caroline died from cancer four years later, leaving Liam to raise Emma alone.

Sophie learned the truth only when a retired nurse contacted her. The nurse admitted that Emma had been healthy. She had kept a copy of the hospital transfer record because she suspected something illegal had happened.

That record led Sophie to Hartwell House.

"I didn't come to take her," Sophie told Liam. "I wanted to see her once."

Evelyn folded her arms.

"She was homeless and incapable of raising a child. I gave Emma a family."

"You told Sophie her baby was dead," Liam said.

"I prevented years of suffering."

"You caused those years."

Liam called his attorney and ordered the original adoption file brought to the house.

The consent document carried Sophie's name and signature.

Sophie examined it.

The handwriting was not hers.

Then Liam's attorney noticed that the witness listed on the document had died two months before Emma's birth.

The adoption had never been legal.

Evelyn's confidence finally weakened.

But the forged signature was not the only problem.

A bank record attached to the file showed that someone had received half a million dollars after the adoption.

The payment had come from Evelyn's personal foundation.

And it had been sent to the doctor who told Sophie her baby was dead.