Chapter 16: Re: The Child

Tessa's POV

I came down the stairs with my chin up and my legs steady.

I did not look at Ansel again until I had to.

Desmond put me on his right hand, in the very middle of the long table.

Ansel sat directly across from him, one seat down from me, in the middle of four hundred people.

He did not touch the wine or the bread.

He watched me the whole time, and I let him.

At the far end, near the kitchen doors, I saw three people I knew.

Lenore wore her pearls and a fixed, bright smile.

Gordon was beside her in a rented dinner jacket.

Paige was not with them, because Paige had a court date and an ankle monitor.

"I took the liberty of inviting the Kincaids," Desmond said, warm in my ear.

"They raised you. It is only right that they hear it from the family."

"Hear what?"

"What a daughter you've turned out to be."

He rose and tapped a glass, and the room went quiet.

He spoke for five minutes about his sister and the long search.

He cried a little, and four hundred people cried with him.

Then he said, "And to the man who kept her safe through twenty-seven years, Gordon Kincaid. Gordon, please. Say a word."

My father stood up slowly and held on to his chair.

Lenore was beaming at the governor's wife.

Gordon's hands shook so badly that the glass rang against his plate.

"I don't," he said. "I can't."

He looked down the length of the table at me.

I looked back at him.

Then he put a hand inside his jacket and took out a folded page.

It was cream paper, curled black along one edge.

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