Replica

She felt trapped. She couldn’t face the replicas again. But she couldn’t face April either, who appeared every two minutes at the kitchen window, cupping her face to the glass to peer outside, obviously dying to peek at the replicas in the guesthouse but doing her best to respect their privacy, at Gemma’s request.

Gemma knew she’d been unfair—she’d asked for help and hadn’t told April anything—but the more she learned, the more impossible it was to explain. Gemma didn’t want to be forced to say the words out loud. She thought the words might scorch her vocal cords, leave permanent damage, make blisters on her tongue. She wished in that moment she’d never come down to Florida, that she’d never heard of Haven at all. She imagined Whole Foods takeout and the big couch and her father safely away on the other side of the world. Kristina happy-zonked on her nighttime pills. April Snapchatting the funny-looking dogs she spotted in Florida. Even Chloe Goddamned DeWitt and her skinny-bitch wolf-pack friends. She would give anything to go back to caring about Chloe DeWitt.

But she couldn’t. She sat down on a sagging lounge chair and began running a search for Emily J. Huang on her phone. It was a common name. She tried Emily J. Huang, nurse, and a result surfaced immediately: a four-year-old funeral announcement. The announcement was accompanied by a picture of a pretty Asian woman smiling into the camera. The service had been held at the First Episcopal Church in Palm Grove, Florida—she’d seen an exit sign for Palm Grove on the highway earlier.

Emily J. Huang recently returned from a seven-year tenure with Doctors Without Borders, where she was dispatched to remote places in the world to volunteer with underserved medical communities . . .

Emily must have made up a cover story to tell her friends and family while she was working at Haven. No wonder Nurse M’s identity had never been established. Emily had been sure to keep her personal and work lives separate.

. . . and had previously served as a staff director at a charity that placed children from high-risk backgrounds in stable environments . . .

Gemma reread the sentence a second and then a third time. Jake had mentioned that Dr. Saperstein had founded a charity responsible for placing foster kids and orphans into homes. Could it be a coincidence? She searched Emily J. Huang and the Home Foundation and sucked in a quick breath. There were hundreds of results, many of them from newspapers or crime blogs. One of the first articles, from a Miami-based paper dated only six months before the funeral announcement, showed Emily Huang leaving a police station, her hand raised to shield her face from the cameras. Gemma took a notebook from her backpack and made notes as she was reading, hoping a pattern would emerge.

The state attorney’s office has declined to file charges against the charity the Home Foundation, after an initial inquiry showed that a number of foster children may have gone missing under its supervision. Our research puts that number at anywhere from twenty-five to more than two hundred over a three-year period beginning in 2001, during explosive growth that eventually resulted in the Home Foundation’s expansion nationwide, and consolidation into one of the most powerful and well-endowed charities in the country. Several relatives of the children who allegedly came under the Home Foundation’s care have come forward to suggest that the charity be charged with abuse, neglect, and fraud. One plaintiff has even filed a suit charging the Home Foundation with abduction.

“After a careful review of the cases in question, and in consideration of the thousands of children that the Home Foundation has successfully placed and monitored in homes across the nation, we don’t think there’s a case here to pursue at this time,” said Assistant State Attorney Charles Lanski.

The Home Foundation has released only a single statement, in which it referred to the accusations as “wild, bizarre, and absolutely invented.” Initially, they did not respond to a request for further statement. But later, Megan Shipman, director of publicity for the Home Foundation, followed up in an email.

“It’s unfortunate that the accusations of a small group of very troubled individuals is calling into question the work of a twenty-year-old organization, which has placed more than two thousand children in safe and happy homes,” she wrote. “Anyone who takes the accusations in context can see that they are no more than attempts to exploit human tragedy for financial gain.”

All three accusers who have come forward were, at the time of the incidents in question, heavy substance abusers. Sarah Mueller was only nineteen and a crack-cocaine addict when a woman she claims was from the Home Foundation offered her the sum of two thousand dollars for temporary custodial guardianship of her infant child, Diamond.

Speaking from the state-run rehabilitative halfway house where she currently lives, Mueller told the Highland News: “I didn’t think it was for good. I thought I could have her back soon as I got clean.” But when Mueller sobered up, after a long period of bouncing between the streets, jail, and rehabilitation programs, she found that the Home Foundation showed no record at all that Diamond had ever come through their system.

Mueller’s story has eerie parallels to that of Fatima “Tina” Aboud, who was barely out of her teens when a woman she describes as a Home Foundation “nurse” came knocking. Aboud claims she was offered three thousand dollars for her son, then two years old. Aboud, who suffers from schizophrenia, agreed, believing that if she didn’t, the CIA would come for her child. Ten years later, Aboud is stabilized through medication and has tried to locate her son, Benjamin, only to find the trail completely cold.