The Baby Couldn't Tie Him, The Lie Did novel · Chapter 21 of 32

Chapter 21: Ten Months

I looked at him holding our daughter in my mother's front room.

"She told you that," I said.

"She said you came to her office in October. That you asked what the baby was worth." He wouldn't look at me. "She said you named a number."

"And you believed her."

"I didn't know what to believe. You left. You blocked me. You went to work for Nathan." He shifted the baby higher on his arm. "She showed me a copy of an offer. She said it was what you'd asked for."

I went to the closet by the door.

The old blue suitcase was still on the floor of it. I'd never fully unpacked.

The folder was at the bottom, under the cracked wooden ring my mother had replaced.

I took it out and opened it on the little kitchen table.

The first page was a letter.

Thick cream paper. An embossed anchor at the top, and under it, Thornton Holdings, Hollins Hill, Silverport.

"Dear Ms. McCallum," it began.

I turned it around so he could read it.

He came to the table with the baby still in his arms and bent over it.

I watched his eyes move down the page.

"...in consideration of two million dollars, paid in full on the date of the child's birth..."

"...relinquish all rights and contact..."

"...Blair Thornton to be named as the child's mother on all records..."

At the bottom, a signature in blue ink.

Virginia Thornton.

The date was typed in the corner.

The Monday before the police station.

"She wrote that before I ever met her," I said. "Before I knew your mother existed. She had it ready and waiting in your office when I walked in."

Mitchell read it again.

His jaw was working.

"I asked for nothing," I said. "Your mother cut off every house my mother cleaned. And then she told you I tried to sell our daughter, and you came here and asked me if it was true."

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