I did not get into the Escalade because I trusted him. I got in because he knew my mother’s name.
The photograph he handed me under the streetlight showed a woman with auburn hair and my face holding a toddler with hazel-green eyes. Her smile leaned slightly left, the way mine does. Her name, Richard said, was Catherine Whitford. She died in a car accident when I was two. He had been in the passenger seat, shattered so badly he spent months in the hospital. During that time, social services placed me in emergency foster care. When he recovered and tried to bring me home, the court told him he had voluntarily relinquished his parental rights.
“I never signed anything,” he said.
His attorney, Margaret Hale, opened her portfolio and showed me copies of the old court records. A form existed with Richard’s name on it. A judge had accepted it. My adoption had been finalized. The file had been sealed. By the time Richard challenged it, I had disappeared into the Talbot family under a new name.
I kept waiting for the part where the story stopped making sense. It never did.
At a Hilton off Broad Street, Margaret laid out everything they had already uncovered. Richard had spent years hiring investigators, reopening trails, comparing sealed records, and fighting for whatever scraps the system would give him. He had found me only recently, and they had been watching the Talbot house for weeks, trying to confirm my identity without frightening me. The birthday party gave them the first safe chance to approach.
Then I showed Margaret the state envelope I had saved from Gerald’s trash.
She read it once and her entire expression changed. “It’s an adoption subsidy summary,” she said. “The state paid Gerald and Donna Talbot about eight hundred ten dollars a month for your care for eighteen years.”
I stared at her. “That’s roughly one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars,” she added.
Everything inside me went still.
