Free The Other Daughter by Lisa Gardner

William, she'd had too many nights like this one, when she woke up to silence and roamed the house, looking for something she couldn't name.
    Until he'd proposed to her, she actually hadn't thought too much about a family of her own. She had her parents to take care of, her brother to worry about. Her life was full enough. But then William had asked for her hand in marriage. She'd never been sure why. She'd said yes. She'd never been sure why. Maybe because at that moment she had a vision of herself as Cinderella living happily ever after with Prince Charming, and that vision had seduced her.
    The hard facts of reality had emerged soon enough.
    She didn't miss William though. What she missed, she supposed, was the dream.
    She came to a halt in front of the fireplace. And her gaze turned automatically to the huge oil painting of little Meagan Stokes.
    “
First we got the timing, Miss Holmes. You just happened to appear the night Russell Lee is fried for killing little kids. Then we got location. You just happened to be dropped at Harper's hospital and he just happened to have blown off an execution to be there. Then we got you. A little girl. Found perfectly clothed and in good health but nobody ever claimed you? All these years, not a single whisper from the people who must've taken care of you for nine years, bought you clothes, fed you, put a roof over your head, hell, even made sure you were found at a hospital, where you'd be in good hands. And then there's the matter of your amnesia. A healthy little girl who couldn't remember
anything
about where she came from, not even her own name. And all these years later, two
decades
later, you
still
don't remember
?”
    “No,” she whispered to Meagan. “I don't remember. I swear I don't.”
    But she wasn't sure anymore. The stirrings in her mind, the recurring black voids, the little girl's voice. How many times now? She'd tried to pretend it wasn't happening, that her mind wasn't beginning to open up and show her things she didn't want to know.
    She already had a family. She didn't want to know about a serial killer or her birth parents or her first nine years. None of that mattered. The only thing that did was that when she'd been abandoned in a hospital without even a name, the Stokeses had stepped in and rescued her.
    For God's sake, she would be
nothing
without the Stokeses. Nothing.
    Twenty years ago, she'd been a little girl waking up alone in a hospital ER. The white, white walls. The scary needles and tubes. The bewildering, frightening faces of strangers.
    Everyone assured her she would be all right. Everyone told her that her parents would show up at any time and set everything straight. She was well fed, well taken care of. Someone out there most certainly loved her.
    A couple of days passed. Time spent in the peds ward listening to other little children whimper and be comforted by their parents. Melanie would roll over in her high, white hospital bed and stare at the blank wall, trying desperately to picture the mommy who would come one day soon to comfort her.
    Social services took over, transferred her to a nearby hospice. No more talk about the return of her loving parents. Now everyone murmured about finding a good foster home instead. What about adoption? It would be one thing if she were a baby, she heard someone say, but since she wasn't…
    Night after night, alone in a plain room, realizing more and more that no one was going to magically arrive for her. No one was going to take her home. No one could even give her a name.
    Then Patricia Stokes came.
    She appeared in the doorway in a pretty pink suit, saying she'd come to read Melanie a story. Melanie didn't say a word. She looked at the thin, beautiful woman with her sad, lilting voice, and had thought almost viscerally,
I want her
.
    She'd thrown her arms around the pretty lady. She'd buried her face against her fragrant neck.
Tell me everything is all right now. Tell me I have a home
.
    The beautiful