And then came the really bizarre part(s)...

Hi, this is Bree again. Summer is still in the hospital, but she's doing a lot better. The doctors figured out what was wrong, but that's not where the story of today really started, so I'm going to begin at the beginning.

As I mentioned yesterday, Summer had to stay overnight in the hospital while the doctors ran tests. Early this morning, her adoption records and birth certificate were delivered, so we could start tracking down her genetic family's medical history. When Maia opened the packet, the first thing on top was Summer's birth certificate.

That was when the first weird thing of the day happened... although it would seem minor compared to what came later. Evelyn said she was hungry, and Marigold offered to take her to the cafeteria to get a snack. Now, the weird part was not that Ev needed to eat - her school normally has a morning snack time, so that's part of her routine - or that Marigold did something helpful. What was weird was that Marigold didn't seem at all interested in the documents and volunteered to go somewhere else without seeing them first.

I mean, yeah, it was Summer's birth certificate, not her own - but they're twins, so most of the information would be the same. Marigold could find out a lot about her birth and her biological family just from asking to see the papers that came today, and the adults would have let her. If it had been me, I would have been dying of curiosity. Marigold didn't even seem to want a look at the records. I guess everyone is different, though, and I figured maybe she just wasn't ready to find out those things yet, so I let it go without saying anything.

Tabitha glanced over Maia's shoulder, and said, "This has been changed."

Maia frowned. "It's supposed to be the original," she said doubtfully, but followed where Tabitha was pointing. It was only one line, carefully covered with a tiny section of the same kind of paper and typed over, barely noticeable. It blended in so well that I think it took Tabitha's vampire eyesight to spot it.

"That's strange," Maia said. "Why would they alter that part?"

Where the birth certificate had been changed wasn't Summer's name, or the names of her parents, or where and when she'd been born. It was where the type of birth was recorded, the part that said it was twins. Maia carefully scraped off the extra with her fingernail, and underneath, it said "single live birth" - not twins.

"Strange," Maia said again. "I wonder if they made a mistake and had to correct it?"

That didn't explain why they wouldn't just print out a new one when they first caught the error, though, instead of changing it. (When Blakeney's cousin was born, the birth certificate had accidentally reversed the mother's name and the baby's name; a replacement was issued with the correct names. That seems more standard than trying to fix it by gluing on more paper.) It also didn't explain why the unedited version of Summer's birth certificate said she didn't have a twin. It seemed like a weird mistake to make. 

Marigold came back with Ev then, and we all looked a little guilty, like we'd been doing something wrong. In a strange way, it felt like we were spying on Marigold, even if that didn't make sense.

Before we had a chance to say anything - whether it would have been a true explanation or an excuse, I'm still not sure - the doctor came back.

"I see you got those records I asked for," Doctor M said. "It turns out we aren't going to need them, though. What Summer is suffering from isn't hereditary. We got back the screens for some of the more unusual toxins, and it turns out she's suffering from poisoning."

Doctor M went on to explain that this didn't necessarily mean someone had poisoned Summer deliberately; it might have been an accident. She told us that Summer would recover and be fine as long as there wasn't a repeat exposure. We were all relieved - except Summer herself, because she'd slept through the whole thing. The doctor went on about what Summer had been poisoned with and the treatments they were doing... but I admit I was only half paying attention, because I noticed something else at that moment.

At some point during the conversation, Marigold had slipped away. She was gone.

Love,

Bree