Unintended Consequences - By Marti Green Page 0,96
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