Chapter 2 - The Storage Room Behind Bell’s Market
Rachel did not go home.
She called her mother to pick up Lily, then drove straight to Bell’s Market while Christmas music played absurdly from every storefront on Maple Avenue.
Mr. Eddie turned out to be Eddie Morales, a sixty-eight-year-old night stocker with arthritis, a red knit cap, and the suspicious eyes of a man who had spent years watching people ignore children in trouble.
“You Rachel Mercer?”
“How do you know my name?”
“Sam came back shaking. Said a woman outside Hawthorne knew about his bracelet.”
“Where is he?”
Eddie folded his arms. “Why?”
Rachel took out her phone and showed him the only photograph she still kept hidden from everyone except Lily: herself at twenty-two, exhausted in a hospital bed, holding a newborn.
Eddie’s face changed.
“That him?”
“I think so.”
“You think?”
“I was told he was adopted.”
Eddie looked toward the rear hallway.
“He wasn’t.”
Sam had been sleeping in a converted storage room between crates of canned soup and paper towels. Eddie had put in a cot, a space heater, and an old plastic Christmas tree with six mismatched ornaments.
Rachel’s throat tightened when she saw it.
“You let him stay here?”
“When I can. Store manager doesn’t know.”
“Where was he before?”
Eddie sat heavily on a crate.
“That boy’s been passed around like a bill nobody wants to pay.”
For three years, Sam had lived with a couple named Harold and Marlene Pike. They called themselves foster guardians, though Eddie had never seen official paperwork. Sam washed floors, hauled boxes, shoveled snow, and sometimes went to school only when somebody from the county was expected to check.
“Did they hit him?”
Eddie’s jaw tightened.
“They scared him. Worked him too hard. Grabbed him. Locked food away. I saw bruises once and called child services.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. A week later, some lawyer came by asking why I was making false accusations.”
Rachel knew before he said the name.
“Bennett?”
Eddie nodded.
“Bennett Family Foundation letterhead.”
The storage-room door opened.
Sam stood there.
“You told her.”
Eddie rose. “Kid—”
“You promised.”
“I promised I wouldn’t hand you to people who hurt you.”
Sam looked at Rachel.
“You gonna call cops?”
“Yes.”
He bolted.
Rachel blocked the outer door but did not touch him.
“Sam, listen to me.”
“Move.”
“I’m not sending you back to the Pikes.”
“You don’t know them.”
“I know enough.”
“You don’t know anything!”
His voice cracked.
Rachel lowered hers.
“You’re right.”
That stopped him.
“I don’t know what happened to you. I don’t know who lied to you. But I know St. Matthew’s. I know September fourteenth. And I know why you have that scar.”
Sam’s face emptied.
Eddie quietly stepped away.
Rachel continued. “When you were born, a monitor clip scratched you beside your eyebrow. You cried for maybe ten seconds. Then you got hiccups.”
Sam stared.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“No.”
“Your first blanket was blue. The nurse wrote SAMUEL M. on the card because I hadn’t chosen your last name.”
“Stop.”
“I held you for four hours.”
“Stop!”
Rachel did.
Sam’s eyes filled, but he refused to let the tears fall.
“My mother left me.”
Rachel could barely speak.
“I was your mother.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Sam shook his head.
“No.”
“I was twenty-two. Your father’s family threatened me. They told me you would be adopted by a safe family if I signed.”
“You left.”
“Yes.”
The word hurt, but Rachel would not hide behind excuses.
“I signed. I have regretted it every day.”
Sam backed into the cot.
“You got another kid.”
“Lily is my daughter.”
“So you replaced me.”
“No.”
“Looks like it.”
He turned away.
Rachel wanted to cross the room and hold him. Instead, she remained where she was.
“You don’t owe me forgiveness.”
Sam wiped his face angrily.
“Good.”
“But you deserve the truth.”
Eddie’s phone buzzed.
He checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“Rachel.”
“What?”
“Pikes are outside.”
Through the narrow rear window, Rachel saw a pickup truck stop in the alley.
A heavyset man climbed out.
Harold Pike.
Beside him stepped a woman in a white fur-trimmed coat.
Rachel had not seen her in nine years.
But she knew her immediately.
Margaret Bennett.
Thomas’s mother.
Sam whispered, “That’s the Christmas lady.”
Rachel turned.
“What?”
“She comes every December.”
Margaret approached the rear door carrying a red gift bag.
Sam’s voice became small.
“She gives the Pikes money.”
Rachel stared at the woman who had once promised her baby would be loved.
May you like
Then Margaret knocked three times.
“Samuel,” she called sweetly through the door. “Grandmother brought your Christmas present.”
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