Part 2
Eli heard the words, but their meaning seemed to remain across the room with the old woman.
Boone lowered himself beside the hospital bed, panting from the walk. Ruth lifted one shaking hand toward Eli and stopped before touching him.
“Come where I can see you.”
Eli moved into the light from the window.
Ruth studied his face, then his hair and hands. “There was a mark,” she said. “Below your right shoulder. Like a little brown leaf.”
Eli looked at Emma. She stepped behind him and pulled down the collar of his damp shirt.
The birthmark was there.
Ruth covered her mouth.
“I changed your clothes for four days,” she said. “Four days before they took you. You screamed whenever Boone left the room.”
Eli had imagined this moment since finding the address, but not one of his imagined grandmothers had lain beneath a medical blanket with a plastic cup of pills on the table. None had looked at him with both joy and shame.
“Why didn’t you come get me?”
Ruth’s hand fell to the mattress.
Before she could answer, a car door slammed outside.
A young woman hurried through the front entrance carrying two grocery bags. She stopped so abruptly that one bag slipped from her arm. Oranges rolled across the floor, bumping against the legs of a chair.
She had dark blond hair twisted into a loose knot and wore pale blue medical scrubs beneath a raincoat. Her eyes moved from Emma to Eli, then to Ruth.
“Grandma?”
Ruth began crying without sound.
The young woman looked at Eli again. “What’s your name?”
He swallowed. “Eli.”
One of the oranges rolled to his shoe.
The woman crouched to pick it up, but her hand stopped halfway. “Eli Carter?”
“How do you know?”
She sat back on her heels. The color drained from her face.
“My name is Hannah,” she said. “I’m your sister.”
Eli did not move.
Hannah rose carefully, as though any sudden motion might send him running. “I was fifteen when you disappeared. I’ve been looking for you since I was old enough to know where to start.”
“You knew I was here?”
“No. We thought your name was Eli Mercer.”
“That’s not my name.”
“It should’ve been. Mom used Carter when she took you to a clinic. She gave them someone else’s last name.”
“Why?”
Hannah’s eyes moved toward Ruth.
“Because she didn’t want people finding us.”
Eli turned to the old woman. “You found me in that shed?”
Ruth nodded.
“And then you gave me away?”
“No.” Hannah stepped closer. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Then why was I in foster care for nine years?”
Ruth reached toward the drawer beside her bed. Her hand could not manage the handle, so Hannah opened it for her.
Inside lay a folded piece of paper, yellow at the creases.
Ruth held it against her chest before offering it to Eli.
At the bottom was a signature written in faded blue ink.
Ruth E. Mercer.
“I was sick,” she said. “They told me the placement would be temporary. But that is my name, Eli. I’m the one who signed the paper that let them take you.”
A red light passed across the ceiling. Then blue. Car doors opened outside, followed by the crackle of a sheriff’s radio…
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇