Rebecca Mason arrived in Meadowbrook two days later.
She did not come running into Thomas’s house.
She did not demand to see Jenna.
She did not call herself Jenna’s mother.
Instead, she stood across the street beside Detective Cole’s car, clutching a small canvas bag while tears rolled down her face.
Jenna watched through the window.
“That’s her?”
Thomas stood beside her.
“Yes.”
Jenna’s voice shook.
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Whatever feels right.”
“What if I don’t want to hug her?”
“Then don’t.”
“What if I do?”
Thomas swallowed.
“Then hug her.”
Jenna looked at him.
For a second, she saw what Thomas was trying to hide.
Fear.
Not fear of Rebecca.
Fear that Jenna might discover another family and decide he was no longer enough.
She hugged him first.
“You’re my dad.”
Thomas shut his eyes.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He smiled faintly.
“I’m working on it.”
Rebecca waited until Jenna walked outside.
They stood several feet apart.
Rebecca was forty-one, with dark blond hair pulled into a loose knot and the same gray-green eyes Jenna had always assumed came from nowhere.
Rebecca looked at those eyes and started crying harder.
“I’m sorry.”
Jenna did not move.
Rebecca quickly added, “Not for coming. I’m sorry you had to learn any of this like this.”
Jenna glanced at Thomas.
Then back at Rebecca.
“Did you give me away?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
Rebecca explained her history at St. Jude.
She had been twenty-five.
Recently divorced.
Financially struggling.
St. Jude offered reduced maternity fees through a private assistance program.
After delivery, doctors told Rebecca her baby had developed severe complications.
She was sedated.
When she woke, she was told the infant had been transferred to another hospital.
No one would tell her which hospital.
Hours later, Dr. Swanson claimed Rebecca had experienced confusion following medication.
He insisted the baby had been stillborn.
Rebecca demanded proof.
There was none.
No death certificate.
No transfer record.
No body.
She called police.
St. Jude produced paperwork containing Rebecca’s signature.
She claimed it was forged.
Eventually the clinic closed after financial investigations unrelated to her case.
Rebecca continued searching.
Private investigators.
Court petitions.
Missing-person reports.
Nothing worked.
Years later, she heard about Thomas Stark rescuing three abandoned infants during the flood.
“I saw your picture once,” Rebecca told Jenna. “You were maybe six.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I didn’t.”
Rebecca opened the canvas bag.
Inside were fifteen birthday cards.
One for every year.
She had written them without knowing where her daughter was.
Jenna stared at them.
She did not immediately reach for the cards.
Instead she asked, “Why didn’t you come here?”
“I did.”
Thomas looked startled.
“When?”
“Ten years ago.”
Rebecca explained she had driven through Meadowbrook but lost her nerve.
At that point Thomas had legally adopted all three girls.
Rebecca feared disrupting their lives without evidence.
“I thought if I was wrong, I’d hurt three children.”
Thomas understood that kind of fear.
Maybe too well.
Jenna eventually accepted the cards.
But she did not open them that day.
Their relationship would not be built in one afternoon.
And strangely, that made everything feel more real.
Meanwhile, Detective Cole’s investigation moved faster.
Calvin Price remained missing.
Police traced the threatening phone call to a prepaid device purchased near the medical warehouse where he worked.
Then another discovery came.
The initials SM did not mean Swanson.
They stood for Safe Motherhood.
St. Jude Clinic had operated an unofficial maternity program under that name.
Officially, it offered confidential prenatal care.
Unofficially, police now suspected some vulnerable young mothers had been pressured, deceived, or manipulated into surrendering newborns.
Some records contained legitimate adoptions.
Others did not.
SM-27, SM-28, and SM-29 were not random hospital numbers.
They were case numbers.
Jenna.
Karla.
Sharon.
Three consecutive cases.
Three mothers.
Three babies marked for transfer during the same weekend.
Then the flood disrupted everything.
Thomas had unknowingly pulled the girls out before whoever controlled those transfers could complete them.
Karla stared at the evidence board inside Thomas’s dining room.
“So Dad ruined somebody’s plan.”
Detective Cole nodded.
“That’s one possibility.”
Thomas laughed bitterly.
“I was fixing a generator.”
“And you saved three children.”
“That wasn’t a plan.”
“No,” Cole said. “But someone may have spent fifteen years trying to bury what you witnessed.”
The next breakthrough came from an old nurse.
Margaret Lane.
The same woman who had written the note pointing them toward Locker 214.
Police found her living under her married name in Kentucky.
She agreed to talk.
But before detectives could travel there, Margaret called Thomas herself.
He put the phone on speaker.
Her voice trembled.
“I’m sorry.”
Thomas leaned over the table.
“Why?”
“Because I should have spoken years ago.”
“Then speak now.”
Margaret revealed that she had worked at St. Jude for only eleven months.
She discovered Dr. Swanson was altering patient records.
Some mothers were told their children had died or been transferred.
Meanwhile, newborns were routed into private adoption channels.
Money moved through shell organizations.
Margaret had copied records.
She planned to report everything.
Then the flood happened.
Thomas rescued the three infants scheduled for transfer that night.
Swanson panicked.
“He wanted those babies separated before police arrived,” Margaret said.
“Why?”
“Because if anyone connected the mothers to the infants, the entire program could be exposed.”
Margaret hid original documents.
Over the years, she sent Thomas anonymous warnings.
“Why didn’t you go to the police yourself?” Jenna asked.
“I did once.”
“And?”
“A detective told Swanson within hours.”
Everyone went silent.
Corruption.
Or fear.
Either way, Margaret stopped trusting authorities.
She moved.
Changed her name.
Kept the evidence hidden.
Only recently did she decide to contact Thomas directly because someone had started following her.
“Calvin Price?” Detective Cole asked.
“I think so.”
Thomas asked the question that mattered most.
“Who was Karla’s mother?”
Margaret went quiet.
Then she gave a name.
Laura Bell.
Police had searched already.
Laura had died six years earlier after a long illness.
Karla’s expression did not change at first.
Then she stood and walked into the backyard.
Thomas followed.
She sat on the workshop steps.
“She’s dead.”
Thomas sat beside her.
“I’m sorry.”
“I waited fifteen years to find out I was too late.”
Thomas didn’t tell her she should be grateful.
He didn’t tell her everything happened for a reason.
He simply sat beside her.
After a while, Karla whispered, “Did she look for me?”
“We’ll find out.”
“What if she didn’t?”
“Then that doesn’t change anything about you.”
Karla leaned against his shoulder.
Inside, Margaret continued talking.
Natalie Mercer, Sharon’s biological mother, had challenged St. Jude aggressively.
Rebecca Mason had kept searching.
Laura Bell’s circumstances were less clear.
But Margaret possessed one final piece of evidence.
A ledger.
Names.
Payments.
Dates.
Transfers.
She had hidden it somewhere Calvin Price could not find.
Detective Cole asked where.
Margaret hesitated.
Then a loud crash came through the phone.
Someone had entered her house.
“Margaret?”
No answer.
“Margaret!”
The line remained connected.
Footsteps.
Heavy breathing.
Then a man’s voice.
“You should have stayed quiet.”
Thomas shot to his feet.
Detective Cole was already calling Kentucky authorities.
The line disconnected.
For seven unbearable minutes, nobody knew what happened.
Then Cole received confirmation.
Police had reached Margaret’s home.
She was alive.
The intruder had fled.
But a neighbor’s security camera captured a vehicle leaving the street.
It belonged to Calvin Price.
Police now had an active interstate search.
And they had something else.
Margaret had hidden the ledger before the attack.
She told officers exactly where.
Inside an abandoned wall cavity at St. Jude Clinic itself.
The old building was scheduled for demolition in three days.
Thomas looked at Detective Cole.
“If that ledger is still there—”
Cole nodded.
“It may finally prove what happened to all three girls.”
But somebody else knew it existed.
And Calvin Price was already moving.
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