The three of them recoiled.
I didn’t raise my arm.
I just walked to the kitchen, opened the bag drawer, and tucked it inside a grocery bag. Then I pulled out another folder. The green one. The one I had put together myself when we married with guarantees, manuals, tickets, and invoices for the valuable items that were actually mine or came from my parents.
I went back to the living room and placed it on the bar.
“Everything in here is backed up by invoices or transfers. Everything in here is mine or my parents’. Everything goes with me tomorrow.”
Adriana was on the verge of a heart attack from pure spite.
“You gold digger!”
The phrase made me laugh this time. Truly.
“No, ma’am. A gold digger is Kevin selling other people’s cherries. I would be a gold digger if I stayed here supplying appliances while you call me crazy.”
David ran a hand over his face.
“Are you seriously going to do this over a fight?”
I tucked the folder into my tote bag and grabbed the suitcase.
“No. I’m doing this for my dignity.”
I opened the front door.
Then the doorbell rang.
One long ring.
Persistent.
The four of us stood still.
We all turned toward the door as if the world could still take one more twist and get even worse.
Andrew was the only one to react first.
“I’ll get it.”
He walked toward the entrance with a firm step. We followed him with our eyes. We heard the latch. The door.
And then a woman’s voice.
Old.
Broken.
Familiar.
“I apologize for arriving unannounced… but I was told Rebecca Miller lives here.”
My entire body went cold.
I didn’t recognize the face. I didn’t know her.
The voice.
It was the exact same voice from the old audio clip that had been in my mother’s paperwork. The one that, years ago, on a poorly recorded cassette, said to someone: “Don’t ask any more about the girl, Rose, they’ve already made their life.”
Andrew took a step back.
Standing in the doorway was a very elderly woman, frail, leaning heavily on a cane, her hair dyed an impossible shade of jet black, and a brown manila folder clutched tightly against her chest.
Rebecca saw her.
And the little bit of air she had left vanished.
“No…” she whispered.
The woman locked her eyes onto her.
“Yes, honey. It’s time.”
I felt my heart crawl up into my throat.
“Who is she?” I asked.
The old woman looked at me.
And with a calm that scared me more than any crying ever could, she replied:
“The only person alive who saw your mother hand Charlotte over… and the same person who signed the forged paperwork so the child would end up where she never should have grown up.”