Chapter 15 - THE COURTHOUSE REUNION
The courthouse had been vacant for a decade.
Its stone steps were cracked, and weeds rose through the iron fence.
Investigators arranged a supervised meeting nearby after verifying that Rebecca had contacted them independently.
I stood in a municipal interview room with my daughters at my side, staring at a door that seemed to hold twenty-two years behind it.
Then the handle turned.
Rebecca entered slowly, leaning on a cane.
Her hair was streaked with gray, her face marked by exhaustion, but her eyes were the same as Lily's.
Emma made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
Rebecca stopped.
“My girls,” she whispered.
Nobody moved for a heartbeat.
Then all three crossed the room.
I watched my daughters embrace a mother they had been taught was dead.
A small, selfish part of me feared that I would vanish from the picture.
I hated myself for feeling it.
Rebecca looked over Emma's shoulder and met my eyes.
“Emily,” she said.
I wanted to tell her everything at once.
I wanted to apologize for believing a false certificate and demand to know why she had stayed silent.
Instead I walked to her and held out my hands.
She took them.
“You kept them safe,” she said.
“I tried.”
“You did more than try.”
For one beautiful moment it seemed we might become a family large enough to hold every broken piece.
Then Rebecca asked whether Daniel had spoken to us.
“Yes,” I said.
She went rigid.
“Whatever he told you, there is one thing he left out.”
She described a night at the clinic when Daniel was offered money and a chance to leave the state.
He refused at first.
Then someone showed him a signed document suggesting Rebecca had agreed to surrender the children.
“Who signed it?” Lily asked.
Rebecca looked at me with grief.
“Your grandmother.”
I thought I was prepared for another betrayal.
But Rebecca shook her head.
“Judith wasn't acting alone.”
She drew a photograph from her pocket.
Standing beside Judith was a younger Arthur Vale.
Between them, holding a stack of papers, stood my father.
May you like
My father, who had supposedly died years before any of this began.
