Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
“Yeah. She’s been a thorn in my side for years. But she’s never outright stolen from me. I was surprised, honestly. She’s a pest, but she’s never been a thief.”
“Is Ms. Clancy a client?”
“She was one of my cases for several years. She was put into the system at birth. I took over her case when she was fourteen and placed in a foster home and later adopted.”
The system. Faint alarm bells started ringing. Mark Gallagher was very familiar with the system and the myriad ways children could be victimized, whether by those inside or out.
“She was an ADHM baby,” Chantelle was going on. “And she was raised at a hospital just outside the city.”
“ADHM baby,” he murmured.
“Mm-hmm. You’re familiar with ADHM kids, right?”
“I am.” Mark knew as much as the average person did, he supposed. It had been a terrible, tragic time when so many babies were being diagnosed and subsequently passing away from what turned out to be cancer. It was almost too much to watch unfold on the evening news. Of course, the kids affected were children born of addicts, most of whom became wards of the state, so few people who didn’t also live that lifestyle knew anyone personally affected. In short, it was not a suburban problem, so if you lived in the suburbs, you were mostly removed, for good or for bad. Good for obvious though perhaps selfish reasons. Bad because those with the most means to help weren’t helping as much as they might if they’d been confronted by the very real human cost day after day. At first, people were afraid to touch the ADHM kids, even medical workers. Afraid they were contagious. There was one public service announcement after another, especially when a few of the kids survived. Apparently, Autumn Clancy was one, because the woman he’d followed down the street using dozens of cameras looked to be in her early twenties. Which would exactly coincide with when the first reports of ADHM babies being born had occurred.
He hadn’t thought there were very many ADHM survivors left, if any at all.
The system.
Had the tragedy been used to victimize children already suffering?
How is this linked to your case, Autumn Clancy? To the lost? The children he’d been searching for for years who’d been sold into cruel experiments for profit, the “profit” taking any number of diabolical forms. Mark didn’t know for sure if there was a link to the program here because there was no way ADHM kids could ever be expected to do the work they sponsored.
Even so, he had a deep feeling there was a connection that he currently couldn’t see.
“Ms. Rogers, I very much need to speak with you. Can you meet me now?”
“Now, well—”
“I would greatly appreciate it.”
“Sure. If you get here in the next fifteen minutes, I can give you a half hour of my time.”
“I’m leaving now.”
Mark jumped out of his chair and raced from the building.
Her name. He had her name. Autumn Clancy.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Autumn and Sam ate outside every night that week. They sat at the wooden picnic table on the deck at the back of the house that overlooked the lake. It was a relatively small lake, and only a few cottages dotted the slip of shore. Autumn told him that a man named Stan Burroughs had built the cozy cottage with his own two hands back in the sixties, and when he passed away, it went to his son, who had become a lawyer and moved to New York City. His son put it up for sale, and Bill had bought it after his wife, Allie, died.
She told him about her adoption and all about Bill, and he saw the way her eyes became soft and her lips tipped whenever she talked about him. Although he was overjoyed that she’d found a family to love her, it made him feel lonely too. He felt again like he was sitting on that fence, looking in.
The weather had grown cool. The trees were trying to hold their last remaining leaves, the forest floor a carpet of red and gold. Sam watched as they fluttered and floated to the ground. He thought about the apple trees and how they must be almost bare as well.
Things are always changing, Sam. Life is moving all around us, even when we don’t realize it.
Was that what Adam had meant? A leaf got picked up by a slight breeze, dipping and rising and somersaulting through the air. Sam felt that way too lately, his thoughts flipping and sailing, traveling to places his mind had never been. He pictured himself walking down that city street toward the school where he’d learned Amon had an assignment. He pictured Autumn as she caught sight of him and then followed him to the school. Their paths, somehow, had miraculously converged. Against all odds and defying every probability. Weeks, maybe even months before, Autumn had planned to be there on that day. Even while Sam was avoiding killing himself, while he was working on that apple farm and sitting on fences alone, life was moving toward that very moment, and he hadn’t even realized it. Couldn’t have known. Have faith.