Chapter 4
Sabrina picked up the paper with shaking hands.
She read the first line.
Then the payment clause.
Then Raymond’s signature.
Her lips parted.
“No.”
Victoria reached for it.
“Sabrina, that document is old. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It says he gave me up.”
“He was pressured.”
I looked at Victoria.
“By who?”
She glared at me.
“You don’t understand what it was like.”
“I understand I paid the rent while he disappeared.”
Sabrina’s eyes filled.
“Mom, is this real?”
Victoria’s silence answered before her mouth did.
“He was young,” she said finally. “He made mistakes.”
“So did I,” Sabrina whispered.
She looked at me, and for one second I saw the little girl with missing front teeth who used to run into my workshop after school.
Then her phone buzzed.
Raymond.
Her face changed.
Victoria saw it and grabbed her arm.
“Do not let him ruin this for you. Tomorrow is about your future.”
I stepped back.
“No, tomorrow is about truth.”
Victoria laughed bitterly.
“You think Logan’s family will care about your wounded feelings?”
“They may care about fraud.”
Her face hardened.
“What did you do?”
“I stopped the Monday transfer.”
She lunged at me.
Sabrina stepped between us.
“Mom!”
Victoria froze.
The shock on her face told me Sabrina had never blocked her before.
I almost felt proud.
Almost.
Then Victoria said, “You ungrateful girl. After everything I did to get you this wedding.”
Sabrina flinched.
There it was.
A familiar fear.
One I had been too busy working to name.
“What did you do to get it?” I asked.
Victoria’s eyes sharpened.
Before she could answer, my phone rang.
Martin.
I answered on speaker.
“Glenn,” he said, “I found the second child.”
Victoria went completely still.
Sabrina turned slowly.
“What second child?”
Martin continued, “Male. Born twenty-one years ago. Placed with a woman named Lydia Moore in Fresno.”
Victoria whispered, “Hang up.”
I did not.
Martin’s voice lowered.
“Glenn, the child’s legal name is Evan Moore. But his birth certificate was amended two years later.”
“To what?”
Martin hesitated.
“Logan Mercer.”
The name hit the kitchen like a dropped knife.
Sabrina gripped the counter.
“Logan?”
Her fiancé.
The man she was marrying tomorrow.
Victoria covered her mouth.
Sabrina looked at her mother.
“Mom.”
Victoria whispered, “I can explain.”
May you like
But none of us moved.
Because some explanations arrive too late to be anything but confessions.
