My Family Saved Their Adopted Daughter First, Then I Died Before Their Eyes novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Two Hundred Thousand
Nell's POV
The judge was a tired woman with reading glasses on a chain.
She listened to my mother for twenty minutes and never wrote anything down.
The family lawyer talked about a fragile daughter and a stable home.
He read the letter from the doctor who had seen me once, in my own living room.
Then my lawyer stood up. She was from legal aid, young, with a briefcase held shut by a rubber band.
"Your Honor, Ms. Ostrander has a birth record, a clinic chart and a hospital bracelet that name her as the child's mother. She asks for a court-ordered DNA test."
"A birth record under a false name," the family lawyer said. "A chart no one has authenticated. A bracelet from a shoebox."
"Your Honor," my mother said, and rose with one hand on the table. "I am the only mother Birdie has ever known. I would not stand in the way of any test. But I would ask that she not be frightened by it."
Half the room nodded.
The judge looked at the park manager, who had come to speak for me and sat in the second row with his cap in his hands. Beside him sat a woman in a green suit from the community foundation.
"I saw the video," the judge said. "I won't pretend I didn't."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"The test is ordered. It will be done this afternoon in this building. The child remains with Mrs. Ostrander for now. Ms. Ostrander has one supervised weekend, to be arranged through the family, and we will reconvene in three weeks."
"Three weeks," Eli said, under his breath, beside me.
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