Chapter 13 - Mother's Confession
Maris turned herself in the next morning.
She wore a gray coat and looked ten years older.
Ortiz interviewed her in a hospital conference room because my father refused to leave the building and Briar refused to let our son out of sight.
I sat across from my mother.
"Start at the beginning."
Maris stared at her hands.
"I was angry at your father. He wanted to remove me from the foundation board after he discovered my affair with Victor. I thought Henry was humiliating me. Victor told me Henry was hiding money. He showed me documents."
"Fake documents."
"Yes. I know that now."
"You knew enough eleven years ago to lock Dad away."
She flinched.
"Victor said Henry needed treatment. He said the sedation would be temporary."
My father laughed from the doorway.
Everyone turned.
He stood there with a walker, a nurse beside him.
"Eleven years is temporary?"
Maris began to cry.
Henry's face didn't change.
"Don't do that for me. You had eleven years to cry."
She covered her mouth.
He moved slowly into the room.
"Why didn't you kill me?"
Maris looked at Victor's audit photographs spread across the table.
"Because I couldn't."
"But you could let him erase me."
"Yes."
The honesty silenced everyone.
Then she looked at me.
"When Briar became pregnant, Victor panicked. He knew the trust would transfer at birth. He wanted me to persuade you to sign guardianship papers. I refused."
"After everything else, that's where you found a conscience?"
"Noah, I hit Briar because she threatened to expose me in front of you. I was furious. I am responsible for that."
Her voice shook.
"But Victor wanted her declared unstable. He wanted the baby under my name because he believed he could control me."
Ortiz slid a photograph across the table.
"Do you know where Victor is now?"
Maris looked at it.
It showed Victor's sedan entering the underground garage beneath Sterling Foundation headquarters thirty minutes earlier.
Her face drained of color.
"The nursery grant office."
"Why?"
"Because there's a vault beneath it."
Henry stared at her.
Maris whispered, "And inside that vault are the original adoption records for Noah."
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I felt the room disappear beneath me.
"My what?"
