Chapter 9 – The Girl Who Shared Her Name
The investigation into Evelyn Price’s records took weeks, not hours. There were no miraculous answers waiting in a single envelope. Files had been mislabeled, witnesses remembered different details, and some of the most important records no longer existed. Renee kept reminding Tasha that the uncertainty mattered. A frightening theory could do real harm if they treated it as fact.
The weeks of waiting were harder than the first burst of anger. At the courthouse, every revelation had arrived with a face attached to it: Derek’s defiance, Brielle’s tears, Renee’s startled silence. Now the work happened through records requests, scheduled interviews, and phone calls that ended with promises to call back. Tasha discovered that uncertainty could exhaust a person more completely than confrontation. She checked her phone too often, then felt ashamed when Brielle noticed.
One Saturday morning Brielle asked whether they could go to the farmers market. Tasha almost said they should stay home in case Renee called. Then she saw the way her daughter stood in the doorway, holding two canvas bags, trying to sound casual. “Yes,” Tasha said. They bought strawberries and warm bread. A musician played guitar near the flower stalls. Brielle stopped to pet a friendly dog and laughed when it sneezed. Tasha watched her and understood that protecting her daughter meant making room for a life that did not revolve around the investigation.
At a café near the market, Brielle asked about the other girl whose name appeared in the records. “Do you think she knows about me?” Tasha stirred her coffee. “I don’t know. And we need to be careful. She might have her own family and her own reasons for keeping her life private.” Brielle nodded. “I don’t want to show up and make her feel like a mystery somebody has to solve.” Tasha smiled sadly. “That may be the kindest thing anyone’s said about this whole situation.” They agreed that if contact ever became appropriate, it should happen with consent and without cameras, accusations, or surprise visits.
Renee shared the same concern. She explained that a document could contain a real person’s name without giving anyone the right to intrude on that person’s life. “Our goal isn’t to turn someone else into a witness because we’re impatient,” she said. “We have to establish why the name appears, whether the record is authentic, and who has a legitimate reason to see it.” Tasha appreciated the boundaries even when they frustrated her. She had seen what happened when Derek treated his own fears as permission to make decisions for others.
Derek began attending counseling on his own. At the first appointment, he spent twenty minutes explaining why Tasha had made the divorce difficult. The counselor listened, then asked, “What did Brielle need from you that you did not give her?” Derek opened his mouth and found no answer he liked. Eventually he said, “The truth.” The counselor waited. “And what made that difficult?” Derek stared at his hands. “I thought if she knew everything, she’d leave.” Saying it aloud did not make it noble. It made it small and frightened.
He started writing Brielle letters he did not send. The first was full of explanations. The second blamed the circumstances. By the third, he could write a sentence without defending himself: I lied about your mother’s calls, and you had to live with the pain of that lie. He read it several times. It was the closest he had come to telling the truth without asking to be forgiven in the same breath. He folded the page and put it away until Brielle chose whether she wanted to receive it.
One evening, Brielle asked Lorraine whether growing up meant learning that parents were ordinary people. Lorraine smiled. “It means learning they’re people, yes. Ordinary is harder to define.” Brielle rested her chin on her knees. “I used to think if Dad was wrong, Mom had to be right about everything. Now I think they can both be wrong in different ways.” Lorraine nodded. “That’s a painful lesson. It can also set you free.” Brielle thought about the courthouse slap, her father’s lies, and her mother’s apology. She was not ready to forgive every part of it. But she was beginning to understand that she did not need a perfect parent in order to demand honest love.
When Renee called with news of a possible contact connected to the old files, Tasha listened without interrupting. The name meant little to her at first. What mattered was the careful way Renee spoke: a lead, not an answer; a person, not a clue. Tasha wrote the details down and looked across the room at Brielle doing homework. She felt the old urgency rise, then settle. Whatever came next, she would not let the search swallow the girl sitting right in front of her.
Brielle returned to school and gradually resumed her routine. She joined the debate team again. Tasha attended the first competition and sat where her daughter could see her. Derek arrived later and took a seat several rows away. They did not speak, but when Brielle won her round, both stood and applauded.
Afterward Brielle approached them with her medal in her hand. ‘That was weird,’ she said, half smiling.
‘What was?’ Tasha asked.
‘Having both of you there and nobody yelling.’
Derek laughed once, then looked as though he might cry. ‘I’m working on it.’
‘I know,’ Brielle said. ‘Keep working.’
Camille and Paul continued reviewing the old placement records. Eventually they located a woman named Mara Ellis, who had worked at St. Anne’s as a social worker. Mara remembered the original case. The child had been a girl whose mother sought help escaping an unsafe home. Evelyn’s agency had arranged temporary housing, but the paperwork used the wrong name and birth date. When Mara questioned it, she was told to stay quiet because the family would be endangered if their location became public.
‘Was that child Brielle Morgan?’ Camille asked.
‘No,’ Mara said. ‘That was the name in the file, not the child’s real name.’
‘Why use it?’
Mara hesitated. ‘Evelyn kept a list of names she could reuse. She said it made the records easier to process. I knew it was wrong. I should have reported it sooner.’
Mara had kept a notebook. One page described a transfer from the hospital to a temporary residence in Raleigh. Another mentioned a woman who arrived late one evening demanding to see the child. The woman was not Evelyn. Mara remembered her because she wore a distinctive gold locket shaped like a leaf.
Tasha knew that locket. She had seen it around the neck of Derek’s mother, Vivian Morgan, who had died when Brielle was nine. Vivian had always been kind to Tasha but strangely guarded about Derek’s early career. She had once warned Tasha not to sign papers without reading them, even if they came from family.
When Renee told Derek about the locket, he looked stunned. ‘My mother went to that hospital?’
‘According to one witness’s recollection,’ Renee said. ‘We still need corroboration.’
Derek pressed his hands against his temples. ‘She told me she didn’t know anything about Evelyn.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t,’ Renee replied. ‘Or perhaps she was trying to protect someone. We cannot know yet.’
Brielle listened to the adults discuss the case at a scheduled meeting. Then she asked the question none of them had considered. ‘Did anyone ever ask what happened to the girl?’
Silence followed.
They had focused so intensely on what Evelyn’s fraud meant for their family that the original child had become another name on a page. Brielle looked from one face to another. ‘She’s a person. Maybe she’s grown up now. Maybe she’s spent her whole life wondering why her records are wrong.’
Renee nodded. ‘You’re right. Any attempt to locate her has to respect her privacy and safety.’
That night Brielle wrote a letter she did not know how to deliver. To the girl who shared my name, it began. I don’t know who you are, and I don’t want to make your life harder. I just want you to know that somebody finally noticed the mistake.
Tasha read it only when Brielle asked her to. She cried quietly at the kitchen table, not because she was afraid this time but because she saw the young woman her daughter was becoming.
A few days later Derek received a voicemail from an unfamiliar number. The caller was a woman who spoke slowly, as if each word had been practiced.
‘My name is Lena Hart,’ she said. ‘I was the girl in the St. Anne’s file. I know who Evelyn Price is. And I know why your mother came looking for me.’
Derek called Renee before calling back. Together they listened to the message again. At the end, Lena added one sentence that made Derek sit down.
‘Tell Tasha Morgan I never forgot what her family did for mine.’
Derek stared at the phone. Tasha’s family? He had always believed this was his past catching up with him. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure.