~FOUND~

Chapter One: Finding Out What Was Lost

Shelby Corcoran hated the mall and very rarely ever ventured there. It was full of loud, delinquent teenagers, slow elderly couples walking around just to window shop or to get in their daily walks, and screaming toddlers with worn out parents who were too tired to even remember what they were at the mall for in the first place. The only reason that Shelby was at the mall to begin with was because she needed to find a birthday present for her niece, Launa. Normally, Shelby would have shopped online for a gift, but Launa wanted something from Build*a*Bear and by the time that Shelby had found out, it had been too late for her to order it online. Plus, Launa had made a special request about the stuffed animal.

So, now she was stuck here. At the mall. On the only day off she had this week since she was spending Sunday with her family for Launa's birthday. The other days she had been getting her things ready for the new school year.

She had only been back in Ohio for a few months and most of the places she had shopped were not frequented by noisy, teenage heathens and screaming children. She had lived in New York for the last fourteen years working in some Broadway plays and giving vocal lessons. She had loved every minute of it, but now she was thirty-four and had fulfilled her dreams in New York enough that she had been grateful when an opportunity to teach music and art, as well as coach show choir, had opened up not thirty minutes away from where she had grown up. She wanted to start a family soon, so she had jumped on it the moment she had heard about it, and had been offered the job within twenty-four hours with pay and moving expenses that she could not turn down.

The moment Shelby walked in Build*a*Bear she realized that she truly would rather be anywhere else in the world. There had to be over fifty little girls in the store running from one side of the store to the other. She wished she had known that Launa wanted one of these stuffed animals before today. The girl had called Shelby the night before and had explained to her that she had stuffed animals from the store that had been made by her mommy, daddy, nana, poppa, sister, and Aunt Judy. Shelby would have come during the middle of the day, regardless of what else she had to do, during the week had she known.

"What the hell have I gotten myself into?" Shelby mumbled to herself as she went slowly into the store to find something as quickly as possible for her niece. Shelby really was not used to being around young children. Sure, she had spent with her nieces and nephews, but fourteen years mainly on Broadway had not given her much of a chance to be around other children.

She headed straight to a wall of animals that needed to be stuffed. There were at least fifteen of the deflated creatures on the wall. There were another ten that were already stuffed and ready to go.

Unfortunately, the one Launa had specifically asked for was only in the deflated section. Hanging on the wall was the unstuffed elephant that the birthday girl had requested. Shelby sighed and grabbed the thing off the wall and then headed to the next tortuous step in the process: The Heart Station. Shelby sighed as she nearly tripped over a small child. This was going to take forever.

"Ohhh! Look at this one! It has stars all over it!" Shelby heard a young girl squeal.

Shelby shook her head, but something in the girl's voice sounded oddly…familiar. She tried to place the voice without turning to stare as she grabbed a little red heart and headed to get the elephant stuffed. Somehow, she knew Launa would know if thing didn't have heart.

"I want a purple tutu."

There was that voice again. Shelby finally turned around. She hadn't been able to place the voice and really wanted to know who it was. It was just so familiar.

Once she turned around, Shelby realized that she did not know who the girl was, but just like the voice was familiar, so was the girl. Her long hair was a dark, chestnut brown, her skin was olive toned, and her big eyes were chocolate brown and full of wonder as she stared at the wall of clothes for the stuffed penguin she had in her hand. Shelby didn't miss the fact that the girl had a pair of jeans on that Shelby herself had in her closet, a pair of jeans that cost at least two hundred dollars. On her feet were a pair UGG boots. Shelby shook her head. Who would spend so much on a growing child? The child could not be more than eleven or twelve, if that because she was on the small side. She would still grow for several more years, though. Shelby seriously doubted that the several pairs of studs that lined her ears were fake either, since the studs all looked like real black diamonds. There were three sets of holes in the child's ears. Oh well, Shelby shook her head. She had things to do that did not involve worrying about other peoples' children.

Shelby shook it off and then continued to finish the elephant in her hand. Fifteen minutes later the thing was stuffed, dressed in clothes, and paid for. Finally. Shelby was ready to get out of the store.

"Daddy! Look at this outfit!" The girl Shelby was still wondering about said to the side of the store.

Shelby had been headed out of the store, but stopped completely when she noticed who the girl was standing beside. Who the girl had just called Daddy.

And Shelby realized why the child had look so familiar.

Because, Shelby knew right then that the child was hers, and someone had a hell of a lot of explaining to do since the only child she had ever carried had been stillborn and the rest of her eggs were supposed to be at a fertility clinic waiting for her to decide when the time was right and she wanted a child. She had been thinking about it a lot lately and knew that she wanted to have a child within the next two years.

But, something was not right. Because the man in front of her was Hiram Berry and he was talking to a young girl who looked and sounded exactly like Shelby and favored her niece Launa quite a bit. Shelby and Launa were the only two girls in the family with such dark hair and olive skin. Most people often thought that Launa was Shelby's child since everyone else in the family was blonde and blue eyed. Shelby's grandmother had had very similar features as well.

Shelby, holding tightly onto her bags, quickly left the store so that the man did not see her.

Hiram and Leroy Berry had a lot of explaining to do. Shelby got out her phone and dialed her sister's number.

Her sister and brother-in-law were both lawyers, and they had some things to figure out, and quickly. Because if that child was hers, the Berry men were going to have a lot of explaining to do.

~FOUND~

Shelby walked into her home-a home she just recently moved into that was much too big for her, but she had fallen in love with the already furnished dance room in the basement- and threw down her keys and purse. She immediately went into the kitchen and sat at the bar so that she could call her sister, Gabriella. Ella was a lawyer, as was her brother-in-law, Russell, who was married to her sister Judy. She wanted Ella right now though.

She listened as the phone rang once, twice, three times. Shelby signed. Ella was probably getting things ready for Launa's birthday party. On the seventh ring, Shelby hung up and dialed Russell's number. She knew that Judy was in Columbus with Frannie doing some shopping for the new school year and Quinn was at her friend's house for the day because Judy had asked her if she wanted to go into Columbus with them.

Two rings and Russell picked up. Before he could get a word in, "Russell, they did something! I don't know how but they have my baby! A baby I didn't even know I had!" Shelby sobbed into the phone. On the other end, Russell was speechless for several moments and was just about to say something when Shelby started talking again.

"Russell, they stole them. I just know it! My eggs! They stole them! I had seven viable eggs left. Only seven. I have to call the fertility clinic. I have to...I know that they…They were supposed to keep them for me!" Tears blurred her vision so much that she could not see across her kitchen.

"Shelby, stop. Come over to the house so that we can discuss this. So that you can explain to me exactly what is going on."

"I…I will be over as soon as I find all of the paperwork." Shelby said, and then hung up. She and her family did not often talk about the time she had played surrogate when she was barely nineteen years old. She had wanted to get out of Ohio and to get to New York. Her parents had seemed so against the idea that she had figured out how to pay for it herself. She had been a surrogate for Hiram and Leroy Berry, two gay men that lived an hour away from where Shelby grew up.

But, there had been many complications. Shelby had fallen in love with the baby she carried, a baby that was half hers, though that, itself, had not been the worst of the complications. They had harvested her eggs, obtaining eleven viable eggs. They had inseminated three and implanted them into Shelby's uterus.

Two of the eggs had not implanted, though the third had. Shelby found out that she was pregnant soon after, and the beginning of the pregnancy had been a breeze. She had not suffered morning sickness, had been delighted when, at nineteen weeks, she had finally discovered that she was carrying a baby girl. She had fallen in love with the baby and did not know what she was going to do when it came time to hand the baby over.

But then, something happened. At twenty-eight weeks, Shelby started bleeding and was rushed to the ER. Eighteen hours later, ten of them hard labor, she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl, a baby that, for one reason or another, had just simply stopped breathing in utero. They couldn't get the bleeding to stop and Shelby remembered little else until she woke up a day later. Upon further inspection, they had discovered that Shelby's ovaries had turned black, a genetic condition that her sister, Judy, had also gone through after having her oldest child, Frannie, and were no longer viable, though her uterus was. She could carry children but the seven eggs she had left were her only chance of ever being able to have a child of her own. The fertility clinic was supposed to keep the eggs until Shelby was ready for them.

Shelby angrily wiped away her tears. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe that little girl was not hers. Maybe her eggs were still safe and sound at the fertility clinic.

She went into her office and grabbed her papers, all papers having to deal with the surrogacy, her eggs, the fertility clinic, and the Berry's. She had kept them, always, never knowing if they would be needed for one thing or another. Shelby grabbed her keys and walked out the door. She knew that Russell would know exactly what to do.

~FOUND~

"Shelby, I can't do anything until Monday, but I can get a court order to find out what happened to your eggs." Russell said, flipping through the papers in front of him. It was clear as day that that the seven eggs that were left were Shelby's. In the papers, the surrogacy agreement had only stated that the initial three inseminated eggs were part of the surrogacy. The other eggs were Shelby's, and only Shelby's to do with what she wished. While it was mostly unheard of, the eggs were not inseminated, and were waiting on Shelby. The shelf life for the eggs was not as long as it would be if they were inseminated, though they would still last quite some time if they were kept in the proper conditions. Shelby and the doctor who had taken her eggs had agreed that they were under the perfect conditions and would last until Shelby was ready to have a child, or the fertility clinic would get in touch with Shelby and let her know that something had to be done sooner than expected if she wanted a child of her own.

Shelby sighed and looked at the table in front of her as she heard the front door open. Quinn walked in, her smile brightening a bit more when she saw her aunt.

"I will work on the paperwork for court tonight so that everything will be ready for Monday." Russell whispered. Shelby nodded as she forced a smile onto her face as she suddenly got a lapful of her niece, Quinn.

"What are you doing here, Aunt Shelby?" Quinn asked. She was still getting used to the fact that her favorite aunt was finally within visiting distance. She lived only about twenty minutes away now.

"I came over to talk to your father. What have you been up too?" Shelby asked her niece.

"I was at my friend, Santana's house. We were talking about school. You know it starts in like two weeks. We want to have a sleepover before school starts too. I have to talk to mom though. Dad said he couldn't say yes or no without talking to mom. Right now her cousin is in, so I left earlier than I was supposed too. Her cousin is sorta snobby. She thinks that she is better than everyone here because she lives in Beverly Hills with her parents."

Shelby smiled and hugged her niece tightly, and listened to her go on talking about the sleepover that she wanted to have with her friend. But, Shelby was only half listening. Her other thoughts were on the child she had seen at the mall. Would she have had the same reaction if it had been her stillborn baby? The baby that was supposed to have gone to the Berry men?

Sure, she didn't know whether the little girl she had seen was truly hers, but Shelby did not believe in coincidences. That child had looked just like her. That child had looked exactly like Launa, only a few years older.

Yes, this situation was different. If that child was hers, then they had to get the eggs somewhere. There had been seven of her eggs left. What was left now? And, why had she not been contacted if the Berry men had planned on using them again?

Shelby had a lot to think about, that was for sure.

~FOUND~

Tuesday afternoon, Russell Fabray was shocked at what he had discovered. He had no idea how he was going to break this news to his sister-in-law. He knew that he was going to have to call in Gabriella and ask her to help him with this situation. She was another sister-in-law, and also a lawyer as well. Yes, he thought, looking down at the papers that had been confiscated from the fertility clinic and from Leroy and Hiram Berry's home in California that morning, he needed Ella's help with this. There was no way that he could handle this situation.

Thirty minutes later, he was sitting in his sister-in-law's office, watching as she looked over the papers that he had handed her the moment that he had walked into the office and sat down.

She looked over at him and just stared for a moment.

"You have got to be kidding me, Russell! What the hell is going on? Did you know? Surely you didn't know about this?" She asked him, her toned edged with anger.

"Of course I didn't know, Gabriella! I never would have kept that from Shelby!" He nearly shouted, outraged that she would even think for a second that he had known about everything that was happening to their family.

Gabriella sat back and sighed.

"I know, Russell. It's just... this is practically a scandal. In a town as small as Lima, this will not be kept secret for long.

Russell shook his head. This was not going to end well, nor was it going to be easy on anyone involved.

~FOUND~

Shelby sat in front of her sister, her face blank. She had not slept well since the day at the mall. It was Thursday afternoon and she had been shocked when Gabriella, not Russell, had called her to tell her that she needed to see her that afternoon as soon as possible.

"Shelby, this is not going to be an easy battle to figure out, but I want you to know that I will do everything that I can to help you." Gabriella told her little sister.

Gabriella could tell that Shelby had not slept. She had been able to tell at Launa's birthday party, though she had not known what was going on then, and neither Shelby nor Russell had mentioned anything until Monday, when Russell had handed the case over to her. It was Thursday now.

"What have you found out?" Shelby was not wasting any time. She wanted to know what was going on.

Gabriella sighed. This was going to be much harder than she had anticipated. Especially now that she knew most of the facts.

"Tell. Me." Shelby hissed. She didn't often snap at Gabriella. Ella was four years older than her, and had always been the one to kick her scrawny ass when they were kids if Shelby picked a fight with her. Really though, they had gotten along really well and Shelby had looked up to Ella.

"Russell did most of the digging. He got records from the fertility clinic. They were subpoenaed early this Monday morning. Soon after, a search warrant was issued on their premises because their records were incomplete. There was also a search warrant on Dr. Warren's financial, phone, email, and tax records…"

"My eggs?" Shelby asked, almost in a whisper.

This was something that Gabriella did not want to tell her sister. But, the fact remained that this was not even going to be the hardest thing to tell her in the grand scheme of things.

"They were sold."

A tear slid down Shelby's face.

"What else? They were mine, Ella!" Shelby cried, staring out the window as she gripped tightly to the arms of the chair that she was sitting in.

"Yes. They were yours and it was illegal for Dr. Warren to sell them. He sold them to Leroy and Hiram Berry not long after you lost the baby and moved to New York. They were, more or less, black market eggs."

"Then what happened?"

"We were then able to get a subpoena for the Berrys' records. They paid Dr. Warren two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for your eggs. There were six viable eggs. Hiram's half-sister was infertile, but able to carry a child. Two eggs, using Maribel's husband's sperm, were implanted and one took. Hiram and Leroy had agreed that if Maribel, the sister, successfully had a child, that she would then carry a child for them. It was successful and she had a daughter she named Santana. A year later she carried a child for them. Two more eggs were implanted then. Dr. Warren did all of this. Again, one egg took; using Hiram's sperm, your egg, and Maribel's body, another little girl was born. Her name is Rachel and she is currently twelve years old…"

"I have two daughters?" Shelby began crying harder. She had two daughters who did not know her? Two daughters who were supposed to be hers, and only hers? Santana. That name sounded so familiar.

"Hiram, Leroy, and Dr. Warren were arrested this morning, Shelby. The child, for now, is with CPS. I had to talk to you before we could proceed any farther."

Shelby just shook her head in disbelief.

"Shelby, there is another child as well." Gabriella said gently.

Shelby's head snapped up. Three?

"I want them. They are my children. I want them." Shelby said through her tears.

"Shelby, this is where the hard part comes in…"

"The hard part? What the hell do you mean the 'hard part'? I have missed years of my children's lives because three men stole from me! I want my children!"

Gabriella knew that she had to tread lightly now. This was not going to be an easy thing to explain or even discuss. It was going to change everything.

"The child that is in Hiram and Leroy's custody, Rachel, will be easy to obtain. They will be going to jail and they, being lawyers, knew that what they were doing was illegal. You will easily get custody of her. It will be harder to get custody of Santana, if you even wanted to in the end. I know the girl and the family. Her father is a doctor, her mother a housewife. She is happy and taken care of. Her parents did nothing wrong. They did not know that the eggs had been stolen, just that, at the time, they could not afford the infertility treatments because he was in school and she was working a minimum wage job to get them by. We have their records too, and they thought that they were helping Maribel's brother in the long run. He is several years older than Maribel."

Shelby chose to ignore that fact at the moment. She wanted to be mad at everyone involved right now. She needed to be mad. She deserved to be mad. Shelby suddenly looked up.

"You said that there was another child. Who? Who had that child?"

Gabriella swallowed. She had tried to hold off on this part.

Shelby noticed this, and her eyes grew round.

"Who is it, Ella? Who is it?"

"Shelby this is going to be hard for you to understand, but you have to know that they didn't have a clue. You know they never would have done it if they had known, and they would have told you."

Fear sank into the pit of Shelby's stomach.

"Ella, tell me." Tears were clouding Shelby's sight. Her sister was now a mere blur.

"The child is Quinn, Shelby. The other two eggs were given to Judy and Russell, though they did not know that they were yours. They didn't know that Hiram and Leroy were the ones who had hired you as a surrogate. Remember, we never met them. You refused to let any of us meet them. Leroy had worked with Russell at the time and knew they wanted another child and he offered him the two eggs. It was, according to Leroy, to get back at you for losing the baby the year before."

This was some cruel joke. She wanted all three of her children. Her daughters. Except, she knew that she could never try to get Quinn. It wasn't fair. She knew how hard it had been on Judy when she had been told that she would never be able to have another child of her own, as she suffered from the same genetic issues with her ovaries as Shelby did, and had discovered it after giving birth to Francine.

Then there was the other girl. Santana. Shelby realized that Santana was the girl Quinn had been talking about the week before. The girl she spent so much time with. They were best friends. She knew that she could not do that to another childless mother.

Then she realized that Santana's cousin was her other daughter. The one Quinn had said was snobby and had grown up in Beverly Hills.

Shelby just shook her head and burst into gut wrenching sobs. The sobs were so loud that several of Gabriella's colleagues quickly came to the door to see if she needed help, only to be waved off until one of them finally shut the door to give the two sisters privacy as Ella walked around the desk and held her little sister in her arms as she sobbed for all that she had lost.