“Was anyone else present? Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“Did you inform Mrs. Nolan of what she was signing?”

“Of course.”

“You didn’t tell her she was signing hospital discharge papers?”

“No, of course not.”

Donald nodding, satisfied. “Thank you, Mrs. Goulden. You may step down.”

When the ghoul passed them, smirking and triumphant, Leah squeezed her mother’s hand so hard she left crescent shaped marks on her poor palm from her nails.

“I’d like to call Rebecca Daley to the stand, your honor.”

Leah looked at Rob, her brows drawn together. She had no idea who that was, and from the confused look on his face, he didn’t either. Why hadn’t the lawyer told them about her?

Someone passed them on the left, approaching the witness stand, and Leah watched the girl walk, something familiar about her, but she wasn’t sure what. When Rebecca took the stand, sitting in the witness box and putting her hand on the Bible, Leah’s jaw dropped, looking over at Erica, and her sister grinned, giving her a thumbs- up.

Elizabeth.

They were all assigned fake names at Magdalene House, and the nuns reused everything, including their names, so there was always a new Jean or a new Lily moving in. After little Lizzie-Carolyn-had given birth, a new Elizabeth had arrived, a haughty girl that no one liked with dark, short bobbed hair and a scandalous rose tattoo on her thigh.

It was that rose tattoo that had allowed Leah to identify her at the Mary Magdalene ritual, strapped on the cross beside Erica, dressed in red instead of white, her belly huge. She was due right around the same time as Leah, and had given birth after the ritual, she remembered, maybe a day or two before Leah had gone into labor with Grace.

But what in the world could she contribute here, to Donald’s case? Leah had no idea, and she watched, they all did, as Donald questioned his new witness, establishing her history, that she lived in Ann Arbor and attended catholic school there, she was the daughter of a prominent local politician, and she had been at Magdalene House with Leah, sharing a room with her at the house for a brief time.

“You shared another room with Mrs. Nolan, didn’t you, Rebecca?”

“Only for a few hours,” she said. “I was supposed to go home, but I spiked a fever and the doctors wouldn’t release me. They’d already filled my private room, so they put me in one of the other rooms until they could get me a new one.”

“So you were in the same room as Mrs. Nolan?”

“Yes. There were lots of other girls too. I think they had ten of us crowded in there. It was… deplorable.” Rebecca wrinkled her nose in distaste and Leah remembered why they hadn’t liked the “new Elizabeth” much when she arrived. She always got special treatment, but now that Leah knew who her father was, it made much more sense.

“So where were you, in relation to Mrs. Nolan?”

“I was in the bed next to her.”

Leah blinked in disbelief. It must have only been a few hours-she didn’t remember Elizabeth-Rebecca-being there at all. But she did remember the curtain next to her being closed. She assumed the girl next to her just wanted privacy to feed her baby.

“Did you know Mrs. Nolan?” Donald asked.

“Only as Lily. And I was Elizabeth. They gave us fake names.” She wrinkled her pretty, pert nose at that too. “But I knew who she was. We stayed in the same room at Magdalene House.”

“Did you talk to Mrs. Nolan when you were transferred in her hospital room?”

“No.” She made a face. “And I wasn’t transferred. It was just a holding area until they could find another private room for me because the idiots gave mine away. Anyway, I kept my curtain closed. I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Did you happen to overhear a conversation between Mrs. Goulden and Mrs. Nolan-the girl you knew as Lily?”

Rebecca looked straight at the ghoul, her gaze never wavering. “Yes, I did.”

“Objection!” Frank jumped up, waving his yellow legal pad. “Hearsay!”

“You need to go back to law school, Frank,” the judge said wryly. “That’s direct testimony.”

“But… but…” Frank fumbled, flustered. “But she heard it through a curtain!”

Judge Solomon looked at him over his glasses for a long time, and finally he just shook his head and said, “Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Highbrow.”

“What did you hear, Rebecca?”

“I heard the ghoul-Joan Goulden-ask Lily-er, Mrs. Nolan, that girl.” Rebecca pointed to Leah, who was sitting on the edge of her seat, eyes wide, heart racing in her chest.

Donald Highbrow turned to the court stenographer. “Let the record show that the witness has identified Leah Nolan.”

“I heard her ask Leah to sign hospital discharge papers.”

“You’re certain.”

“I am.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I heard her.” Rebecca blinked at him, giving him an exasperated look. “She even said the nurses asked her to do it. The ghoul said, ‘The nurses are so busy, they asked me to have you sign the discharge papers before you leave.’ It was clear as day. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past her. She did the same thing to me.”

The whole room was silent and Leah thought she could hear her own heart beating, like a big bass drum in her ears. It was deafening.

“Objection!” Frank jumped up so fast, several people gasped in surprise. Leah was still too stunned to say anything. “Irrelevant!”

Judge Solomon shook his head. “Nope. I’ll allow it. Go ahead, Donald.”

“The ghoul-I mean, Mrs. Goulden-” Several people tittered at Donald’s mistake. “She did the same thing to you? What do you mean?”

“She tricked me. She knew I wanted to keep my baby, and she didn’t want me to keep it. She tricked me!” Rebecca stared down the ghoul, whose face was red, even with all the makeup coverage. “Except instead of discharge papers, she told me I was signing permission for the doctors to commit an autopsy.”

Donald’s eyes widened. “An autopsy?”

“Because she told me my baby was stillborn.”

Leah made a small, pained sound and felt Rob’s hand in hers, her mother’s still clutching her other one. How could she? How dare she?

Leah might not have liked Rebecca-the girl she had known only as “the new Elizabeth”-but when she saw the girl look at her, their eyes locking, she knew their bond went beyond like or dislike. This wasn’t about something so petty. They were both mothers, and they had been denied their rights as mothers by the same woman.

Donald let the judge absorb that information before he leaned in and asked gently, “And was your baby stillborn, Rebecca?”

“No.”

“How do you know that?”

The girl’s eyes were blazing with triumph when she looked across the courtroom at the ghoul. “Because my father got my baby back.”

“Your father, the senator?”

“That’s right.” Rebecca had clearly lived a life of privilege. It was the same attitude that had rubbed all the girls the wrong way at Magdalene House. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t human, that she didn’t have feelings. Leah saw that on her face when she told Donald, “When my Daddy visited me, I told him they said my baby died, but I knew he didn’t die. I heard him cry. I was drugged, I know-they had me on something really weird. But I heard him cry, I know I did.”

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