Mom nodded.
“The flower on your wrist is not simply decorative.”
I stared at him.
He continued.
“It was an identification mark used approximately thirty years ago by a residential program for children called Maplewood House.”
My mother closed her eyes.
Dr. Reeves continued.
“Children who stayed in that program received the blue flower mark with guardian consent. Patricia recognized it because she volunteered there as a teenager.”
Suddenly, the entire morning made sense.
Patricia hadn’t been frightened by the tattoo.
She had recognized it.
“Maplewood House eventually closed,” Dr. Reeves said. “The administrators came under investigation for serious financial misconduct.”
He paused.
“But the larger problem involved the children’s records.”
The room became very quiet.
“Investigators discovered that some adoption files had been altered. Names were changed. Family histories were obscured. Birth and medical records were sometimes falsified. Connections to biological relatives were lost.”
I looked at Mom.
She was staring at the floor.
Dr. Reeves explained that investigators had recently reopened parts of the old case.
They had spent months trying to identify adults who had once lived at Maplewood House.
But the records were incomplete and inconsistent.
