The Spare They Came Begging For novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Review

On Friday the three of us sat in the same row in Courtroom 808.

My father on the aisle. Then me. Then Verity.

It was the first time we'd sat together anywhere since the gala, and none of us had planned it.

Verity had come in alone and stood at the end of the row, not sure she was allowed.

My father had moved over without a word.

The reporters filled the back again.

My mother came in through the side door at ten past nine.

She wore the gray suit again.

It hung on her worse than it had in February.

She stood at the defense table with her lawyer and didn't look at the gallery.

The judge was a heavy woman with reading glasses pushed up on her head.

Then the prosecutor stood up and read the facts out loud.

All of them.

The IVF clinic and the embryo testing, paid for by a foundation grant my mother had approved for herself.

The shoebox in my old closet. The license. The uniform store in Quincy.

The phone call to Commonwealth's donor office, in which she'd given my birthday and my Social Security number and said she was me.

I watched the judge's pen instead of my mother.

The signature on the consent form, which a handwriting examiner had matched to the practice sheets found in her desk.

Twelve pages of my name, in her hand. Slanted C. Hook on the t.

The twenty-two years of payments, to the dollar.

Four hundred twelve thousand, eight hundred sixty.

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