THE ERASED DAUGHTER

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Gabriel Reyes

The man who found me was not what I expected.

I expected a suit. I expected a briefcase. I expected the polished, corporate sheen of a Connecticut lawyer's investigator — someone who wore cufflinks and said "per our conversation" and billed in six-minute increments.

Gabriel Reyes wore jeans. A leather jacket that had been worn enough times to develop the particular patina of actual use rather than fashion statement. Boots that had walked through mud, not department stores. And his messenger bag — leather, battered, held together by one strap and what appeared to be sheer willpower — was slung across his chest in the way of a man who carries everything he needs and doesn't need anything he doesn't carry.

He arrived at my apartment in Somerville at 6:30 PM on a Wednesday, three days after our phone call. He'd offered to meet at his office in Hartford. I'd asked him to come to me, because I wanted home court advantage, because I wanted to be in the space where I was Maren Calloway — researcher, adopted daughter, nobody special — before I became whatever I was going to become after he showed me what was in his bag.

"Ms. Calloway." He offered his hand. Firm grip. Calloused palm. "Thank you for seeing me."

"You said you had something that would change my life."

"I did say that. And I meant it. May I come in?"

I let him in. My apartment was small — one bedroom, a galley kitchen, a living room that served as my office because I couldn't afford a separate workspace. The furniture was secondhand. The bookshelves were overflowing. The walls were covered in corkboards with case notes and research maps and the particular organized chaos that Margaret always called "Maren's beautiful mess."

Gabriel looked at the corkboards. He looked at the books. He looked at the framed photograph of Margaret and Ray on the mantelpiece — the one from their twenty-fifth anniversary, both of them beaming, Margaret's arm around Ray's waist, my hand on Margaret's shoulder.

"Your parents?" he said.

"The people who raised me. Yes."

He heard the distinction. I saw his eyes register it — the practiced, investigator's registration of a detail that told him something important about the person he was talking to.

"I'm going to show you some things," he said. "And I'm going to tell you what I know. And then I'm going to ask you to make a decision. The decision won't be easy."

"I'm a genealogist, Mr. Reyes. I make decisions about dead people's families for a living. I can handle difficult."

"This isn't about dead people. This is about you."

He opened his messenger bag. He pulled out a folder — thick, manila, held together with rubber bands that were stretched to their limit. He set it on my kitchen table — the small, scratched, IKEA table where I ate my meals and reviewed my case files and occasionally cried about Margaret.

He opened the folder.

The first document was a birth certificate. March 18, 2007. Hartford County, Connecticut. Twin female births. Mother: Evelyn Rose Ashford. Father: James Theodore Ashford IV.

WREN ELIZABETH ASHFORD.

MAREN ELEANOR ASHFORD.

"I've seen this," I said. "I found it in the databases."

"I know. That's why I'm here." He pulled out the next document. "This is the death certificate filed the following day."

I looked at it. March 19, 2007. Cause of death: accidental fire. Filed by Holcombe, Ashford & Pike.

"And this," Gabriel said, pulling out another document, "is the fire department report for the Ashford property on the date referenced in the death certificate."

He handed it to me. I read it.

There was no fire. No incident report. No call. No response. On March 19, 2007, the Harborfield Fire Department had no record of any activity at the Ashford estate.

The fire was fiction. The death was fiction. The entire basis for the death certificate was a fabrication.

"Maren Eleanor Ashford was declared dead in a fire that never happened," Gabriel said. "And four months later, a baby named Maren Eleanor appeared in the Connecticut adoption system with no family history, no birth records, and no explanation for how she got there."

I stared at the documents. The birth certificate. The death certificate. The fire report.

"You think I'm her," I said.

"I know you're her."

"How?"

He pulled out one more document. A photograph. Not the Polaroid — I wouldn't see that until Ashwood Hall. A different photograph — a hospital photograph, the kind they take in the maternity ward, two newborns side by side in identical pink blankets.

Written on the back, in handwriting I would later learn was Evelyn's: "Our girls. March 18, 2007. M & W."

M & W.

Maren and Wren.

I looked at the photograph. I looked at the babies. I looked at the one on the right — the one marked "M" — and I saw my face. Not my adult face. My infant face. The face I'd seen in Margaret's baby album, in the photographs she'd labeled "Maren's first month" and "Maren's first smile" and "Maren's first everything."

It was the same face. The same baby. In two different photograph collections, taken by two different mothers, identified by two different names.

Margaret's Maren and Evelyn's Maren were the same person.

I was the same person.

"Who hired you?" I asked. My voice was steady. My hands were not.

"Theodore Ashford. Maren's — your grandfather. He's eighty-two. He's dying of cancer. He has approximately six months. And before he dies, he wants to find the granddaughter his wife made disappear."

"His wife?"

"Cordelia Ashford. The family matriarch. The woman who ordered the fabricated death certificate, the staged fire, and the covert adoption. The woman who has spent nineteen years making sure nobody could find you."

"Why?"

"That's what I've spent four months trying to determine. And that's the decision I mentioned. Because finding out why means going to Ashwood Hall. It means meeting the family. It means confronting Cordelia. And it means accepting the possibility that once you walk through that door, you can never go back to being just Maren Calloway."

I looked at the photograph. At the two babies. At the "M" on the back.

"When do we leave?" I said.