Her Buried Baby Returned Eight Years Later
CHAPTER 1 - The Girl With the Golden Watch
Amelia Grant noticed the little girl because she did not belong in the restaurant.
The girl looked no older than eight. She held a golden pocket watch so tightly that its chain was wrapped around her fingers.
"I think... this might be yours."
Amelia accepted it.
The moment she touched the scratched metal, her hands began to tremble.
She recognized the initials engraved on the back.
A.G.
Her late mother had given her the watch on her eighteenth birthday. Amelia lost it eight years earlier at Saint Matthew's Maternity Clinic.
She pressed the clasp.
The watch opened.
Inside was a faded photograph of twenty-five-year-old Amelia holding her newborn daughter.
Amelia stopped breathing.
The photograph had been taken only hours before the baby supposedly died from respiratory failure.
Amelia was told the watch had been buried with her.
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
The girl began crying.
"My mommy gave it to me."
Amelia looked at the child's pale blue eyes.
Her daughter had possessed the same eyes.
"What is your name?"
"Lily."
Amelia gripped the edge of the table.
That was the name embroidered on the blanket she placed around her baby.
"Where is your mother?"
"She died three months ago."
The woman who raised Lily was named Nora Bennett. Before dying, Nora gave the girl the watch and an envelope addressed to Amelia.
Lily had carried both through two foster homes before running away.
Amelia opened the envelope.
Nora's first sentence destroyed everything Amelia believed about the past.
Your daughter did not die. I was the nurse ordered to take her from you.
Amelia read the letter twice.
Nora claimed the adoption documents were forged. She had believed Amelia willingly surrendered the baby until she discovered an official death certificate dated the same day.
Amelia reached toward Lily but stopped herself.
The child was already frightened.
"I won't hurt you."
Lily looked at the photograph.
"Is that baby me?"
Before Amelia could answer, the restaurant manager approached with another envelope found inside the watch's leather case.
It contained the name of the person who paid Nora to remove the child.
Beatrice Hawthorne.
Amelia's former mother-in-law.
Amelia looked at Lily again.
Her daughter had not been lost through illness.
She had been taken.
Then Lily whispered something even more painful.
"Mommy said a rich lady kept watching us."
"What lady?"
Lily pointed toward the restaurant entrance.
A silver-haired woman stood outside.
Beatrice.
The moment their eyes met, she turned and hurried toward a waiting car.
The woman who stole Amelia's baby had returned to make certain mother and daughter never found each other.
