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A New Life Begins
Laurie Willow and Chuck Thompson met while they were students at Fort LeBoeuf High School in the Erie township of Waterford. They started going steady in March 1980, during Chuck's senior year. He gave her his class ring, and they remained together after he graduated that spring.That fall, Laurie learned she was pregnant. Initially, she refused to believe it and told no one. But as her body kept changing, the frightened teen couldn't hide the truth. She confided in her mother, who was then divorcing Laurie's father and starting a job to support herself and her kids. There was so much hurt and confusion in the family, her mother advised Laurie to give up the baby.
Laurie explained the situation to Chuck. And he agreed adoption was the best course. They were too young, too unprepared and financially unable to care for a child. They weren't much more than kids themselves.
The next few months were a blur for Laurie. She continued to go to school, taking advantage of the baggy fashions of the time to conceal her pregnancy. As she moved closer to her April due date, she stayed home from school, using the excuse that she had mononucleosis. In truth, carrying a baby on her tiny frame caused her such intense back pain that she couldn't sit in class or sleep in bed at night.
Then one day in April, her water broke. Laurie's mother drove her to Hamot Medical Center in Erie. When Laurie arrived, she was whisked away in a wheelchair and taken to a delivery room, where a doctor determined the baby was breech and that she would need an emergency C-section.
The doctor rushed her to an operating room, where nurses and anesthesiologists quickly prepared Laurie for surgery. Soon, under the bright surgery lights, a baby girl with brown hair was born and then taken away. Laurie never held her.
But while the baby disappeared, the guilt did not. As time passed and the trauma and fear subsided, Laurie and Chuck would each wonder what happened to that tiny baby with the full head of brown hair.
Laurie went off to college, graduated, found a job at an advertising agency and then in August 1986, about the time their baby was preparing for kindergarten, Laurie married her high school sweetheart.
They never had more children.
Now, as Laurie looked at the shocked expression in Missi's brown eyes, she wondered if it was really true. Had she actually been working with her daughter for the past five months?
They sat together, their salads untouched, and Laurie slowly related the facts she knew that seemed to fit: Missi's birth date, Chuck's allergies and beer can collection, the horses, and the hair color. But she also probed deeper, asking Missi questions. And each of her answers seemed to ring true.
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