Chapter 22: What the Blood Owes

Lena's POV

The officer gave the Donnellys five minutes in the corridor.

Peg did not waste any of them.

She turned Roxie by the shoulders so that she faced the wall and then faced her again.

"Look at me," she said.

Roxie looked.

Her mascara was down to her chin.

"I did it, Mom," she said. "I did all of it. I'm sorry."

"I know what you did. I heard it in a ballroom, with three hundred strangers."

"She told me you were stolen. She said the Donnellys took me and the hospital paid them to keep quiet."

"Who said that?"

"Adelaide. She said she'd been robbed and you were all in on it."

Ken made a low sound in his throat.

"There was a blackout at St. Brendan's the night you were born," Peg said.

Her voice was level and quiet.

"The lights went out for forty minutes."

"There were two babies in the nursery, and one nurse. She put the wrong bands on in the dark."

"In the morning the nurse handed me a baby, and I took her home and never doubted it."

"Then Lena walked into my kitchen with my jaw and my hands, and I knew."

She looked at me for the first time.

"Nobody sold you. Nobody stole you. It was an accident, Roxie. A bad night, that's all it was."

Roxie started to cry in a way that had no noise.

"I'd have raised either of you," Peg said. "I did raise one. You're mine."

"I tried to hurt Lena."

"I know."

"The second time. I was going to put it in her tea, at your table."

"Roxie," Peg said. "I know."

Ken took off his glasses, and put them back on, and took them off again.

He did not say anything. He put his large hand over his daughter's cuffed ones and stood there.

I stepped forward.

Everyone turned.

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