Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green

Chapter

37





By 3:00, Sunshine still hadn’t shown up. Melanie had made herself comfortable sitting on the floor in front of her door, but now her legs were starting to cramp. She stood and looked at her watch once more. She had to stop that. Checking so often wasn’t going to make the minutes move any faster.

She’d heard from Dani. They had only until sunrise to get her DNA run. Bruce had worked his magic with the guys from the lab. They’d stay all night to work on it. But first they needed to get it. And for that they needed Sunshine.

Twenty minutes later she heard the elevator door open. Walking toward her was a blond woman, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her red cheeks looked like two apples, and her slate-blue eyes were fringed with thick brown lashes. The little girl holding her hand looked like a carbon copy of Angelina Calhoun at the same age.

“Ms. Quinn? Sorry we’re so late. Traffic was impossible.” She introduced her family and unlocked their apartment door. “Please, come in.” The family walked inside and Melanie followed. “Let me get Rachel settled and then we can talk.” She took the little girl into the kitchen and took a bottle of apple juice from the refrigerator and poured it into a sippy cup. “Eric, would you take Rachel into our room and turn on the TV for her?”

“Sure.”

Sunshine turned back to Melanie. “Please sit,” she said, pointing to a chair. She sat down on the sofa across from her. “So, what’s the big emergency?”

Melanie didn’t know how to start. This woman had grown up believing her parents were the Harringtons. How could she tell her that everything she knew had been built on a lie? Maybe if she’d had more time she could have brought someone with her, someone more adept at easing into the truth. “Mrs. Bergman—”

“Please, call me Sunny.”

“Sunny, there’s a man on death row who’s going to be given a lethal injection just before 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. He was convicted of murdering his daughter, a four-year-old girl named Angelina Calhoun. From the very beginning, he’s always claimed that the body of the child they found wasn’t his daughter. I’m telling you this because … we believe you’re Angelina Calhoun.”

Sunny sat before her in stunned silence, her hands gripping each other.

“I know this is hard to take in,” Melanie continued, her voice soft. “But the only way to stop the execution this coming morning is to take a DNA sample from you and have it tested.”

Sunny shook her head, her hands still locked together. “Why are you saying this? My parents were Ed and Trudy Harrington.”

“Those were the folks that raised you. But we don’t believe they’re your biological parents.”

Hugging herself, Sunny began to rock and stared at the floor. “No, no, no,” she said over and over.

“Do you remember being sick as a child?” Melanie asked.

Her rocking stopped and she became still. Sunny looked up at Melanie and whispered, “Yes.”

“You had leukemia. Your biological parents tried to get medical care for you. At first they were able to, but then the leukemia came back. You needed a bone-marrow transplant, but they had no insurance and no one would treat you.”

“I remember being in the hospital. I remember how much it hurt.”

“You would probably have died if you didn’t get treatment. Your parents loved you very much, so much that they made the ultimate sacrifice. They brought you to the Mayo Clinic and left you there, hoping that the county would take you in and get you the help that they couldn’t provide. They need your help now.”

Tears rolled down Sunny’s cheek. Eric walked back into the living room, sat next to Sunny and put his arm around her. Sunny lay her head on Eric’s chest and sobbed. He held her tightly. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Sunny lifted her head, wiped away her tears and recounted what Melanie had told her.

“Why Sunny?” Eric asked Melanie. “Why would you think it’s her and not some other child treated at the Mayo Clinic?”

“There’s no time to go into the complete investigation. We’ve got to get a DNA sample to the lab right away. But I’ll tell you this—your daughter is the spitting image of Angelina Calhoun at that age.”

Sunny slumped back on the couch. “What do I have to do?”

“I’ll just take a swab of the inside of your cheek. That’s all. And then I’ll bring it to the lab. DNA is exact. It’ll tell us definitively whether you’re Angelina Calhoun.”

Sunny nodded. “Okay. You can take it. But this man, this man you say is my father—”

“I can tell you all about him and your mother, too, but later. If I don’t get to the lab fast, then—well, I just need to get there.”

“Yes, I understand.”

Melanie took out a swab kit, scraped the inside of Sunny’s cheek and carefully placed the buccal swab in a plastic baggie. She said goodbye and then sprinted down the stairs, too impatient to wait for the elevator. She took a cab to take her to the lab’s midtown office and arrived just before 3:30.

“Got it,” she said to Stan, the technician waiting for her at the front desk. “Can it be done? Can you get results by 5 a.m.?”

“It’ll be tight. We should be able to get preliminary results at least.”

Melanie put in a call to Dani to let her know the lab had gotten the sample. There was nothing left for her to do. Nothing but wait.


Sunny went through the motions of making dinner, still numb from the bombshell that had exploded in her living room. How could this be? Yet she knew it was true. The absence of any pictures of her as a baby and a toddler now made sense. Instead of inspiring anger toward the parents who raised her—anger that they’d kept this secret from her—Melanie’s revelation intensified her love for the Harringtons. They had taken in a desperately sick child and loved her as if she was their own. But her biological parents? She didn’t know how she felt about them.

“Are you okay, honey?” Eric asked as he came into the kitchen. He’d been asking her the same question every fifteen minutes.

“I’m not sure.” She held out her hand to show that it was shaking. “How am I supposed to feel about my parents? The ones who left me?”

“I don’t think there’s any one way you’re supposed to feel about them. And there’s no reason for you to figure out now how you do feel. Give it time, let it sink in.”

“But that woman—she said my father will be executed in the morning. Because of me. Because they think he killed me.”

“We don’t even know for sure that he is your father.”

Sunny looked up from the mixing bowl. “I know. He’s my father. And if he dies, it’ll be because of me.”

Eric took Sunny’s hands and led her from the kitchen. He sat her down on a chair at the dining table and then sat down next to her. “Listen to me. If he is your father, if the DNA tells you that, he made a decision to give you a second chance at life. He did that out of love for you. Tell me, is there anything you wouldn’t do for Rachel?”

Sunny shook her head.

“Whatever happens next, always remember, your parents made that decision. Not you. And you’re not responsible for the consequences of their decision.”

“I don’t know how I live with those consequences.”

“You live with it to honor their sacrifice.”

Sunny nodded. Somehow, she knew that’s what her parents would want. She also knew it would not be easy.