Chapter 8
The reception food was already prepared.
Two hundred meals.
Paid for by me.
Sabrina asked if we could donate it.
Within an hour, the pavilion staff packed trays for shelters, clinics, and a veterans’ center near the harbor.
I watched my daughter help carry boxes in her cream pantsuit.
Her hands shook.
But she kept moving.
Logan helped too.
They did not speak much.
What could they say?
Sorry we almost married because our parents buried the truth?
Sorry our entire love story was built over a grave of lies?
At sunset, Sabrina found me on the terrace.
The ocean was gray.
Her face looked younger than it had in years.
“Dad?”
That word nearly broke me.
I turned.
“Yes?”
She swallowed.
“I don’t know if I deserve to call you that after what I said.”
“You don’t earn a father by being perfect.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I was cruel.”
“Yes.”
She flinched.
I continued.
“And you were lied to. Both can be true.”
She hugged herself.
“I told you he represented us better.”
“I heard.”
“I laughed about your car smelling like machine oil.”
“I heard that too.”
She started crying.
“I’m sorry.”
I wanted to forgive her immediately.
The old me would have.
The useful me.
The man who accepted scraps and called them dinner.
Instead, I took a breath.
“I believe you’re sorry. But I need time.”
She nodded quickly.
“Of course.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m leaving you alone in this.”
Her shoulders shook.
“It doesn’t?”
“No.”
She covered her face.
“I don’t know who I am now.”
“You’re Sabrina Adler.”
She looked up.
“My last name?”
“The one you chose when I adopted you. The one Raymond signed away. The one I never took back.”
She sobbed.
I held her carefully.
Not like when she was little.
Like someone wounded who still needed room to stand.
That night, Victoria was released pending formal charges.
She returned to the house and found the locks changed.
I had moved out her belongings into the garage under Helen’s supervision.
She called me twenty-three times.
Then she left one voicemail.
“You think you can humiliate me and still keep my daughter?”
My daughter.
Not our daughter.
Never our daughter when ownership was at stake.
I saved the message.
Everything was evidence now.
At midnight, Martin called.
“I found more.”
I closed my eyes.
“What more?”
“The private placement wasn’t legal.”
My stomach tightened.
“What does that mean?”
“Victoria and Raymond didn’t simply give Logan away. Money changed hands. A lot of it. And the attorney involved vanished two years later.”
I looked through the terrace doors at Sabrina asleep on the couch inside the pavilion office.
“How much money?”
“Fifty thousand.”
May you like
“When?”
“The day after Logan was born.”
