This story begins with a forbidden fruit.

In the 1970s, in a small town in Western Ireland, an orchard owner chased off two boys stealing his apples.

The youngsters avoided being caught by clambering over the stone wall of the derelict Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home.

A week prior to the groundbreaking, a bus transported a group of the home’s elderly survivors and relatives of the mothers who labored there to the neighborhood of rowhouses surrounding the playground and memorial garden.

A passageway between two homes led them through a gate in metal fencing erected to hide the site that has taken on an industrial look.

Beyond the grass, where children once played and beneath which some may be buried, stood storage containers, a dumpster, and an excavator ready for excavation.

It would be their last chance to see it before it’s torn up, and maybe the bones of their kin recovered so they can be properly buried.

Corrigan, who likes to say that justice delayed Irish-style is “delay, deny ’til we all go home and die,” hopes each child is found.

“They were denied dignity in life, and they were denied dignity and respect in death,” she said.

“So we’re hoping that today maybe will be the start of hearing them because I think they’ve been crying for an awful long time to be heard.”