Leah’s brain constructed a chain of events. “Erica Montgomery suffered placental abruption, so they put her under and performed an emergency C-section. Her baby girl was born at 10:10 a.m. with a rapid heartbeat. They took her directly to the nursery for treatment.” Leah pointed to the paper. “It says here that Trina Brookside gave birth to her baby eighteen minutes later, at 10:28. Trina’s baby girl was also taken to the nursery. Is it likely that either a rapid heartbeat or cyanosis could have caused problems down the road for the babies?”

“No. Both babies had issues that, once stabilized, were no longer of concern.”

“I’m guessing it was during the interval when the babies were being treated in the nursery that they were switched.”

“That would make sense.”

“As soon as the babies were well, they must have been sent to the wrong mothers. Erica’s baby was taken to Trina. And I, Trina’s baby, was taken to Erica. Who do you think might have been responsible for the switch? A doctor? Nurses?”

“Most likely nurses. They’re the ones responsible for transporting babies between rooms.”

Leah moved the pages to the side, revealing two new pages. Her eyes scanned the lines of text. Trina and Erica had stayed in the same wing of the same hospital for two days, both of them bonding with each other’s baby, before Trina had gone home.

Trina had been twenty-seven years old at the time. Married. This pregnancy was her first. Her address: 11482 Riverchase Road, Atlanta, Georgia. Ten numbers had been written clearly and decisively onto the line beside Phone Number. Those numbers practically blinked like a neon sign. What if she dialed that number and her biological mother answered?

Surely, her mother would not answer. This number was a landline from The Time Before Everyone Had a Cell Phone, which meant that Trina probably wasn’t using the same number now that she’d used then. It was also a stretch, but perhaps not as large of a stretch, to think Trina might still live at the house on Riverchase Road. As soon as Leah left here, she’d drive there. Just to look.

She uncovered the next two pages. One was a birth certificate. Katrina Elizabeth Wallace Brookside and her husband, Jonathan Delaney Brookside, had named their daughter Sophie Grace.

Trina and Sophie. Leah rolled the unfamiliar names around in her brain. She tried on Leah Brookside for size—except, she’d never have been Leah Brookside. Had things gone differently, she’d have lived her life as Sophie Grace Brookside.

The next page divulged information about Trina’s pregnancy, including the fact that her blood type was B, which meant her husband’s blood type must be A, like Leah. It also meant that Sophie’s possible blood types—B and O—would not raise any red flags with her or her parents because those types could naturally occur from Trina and Jonathan.