“I need to know what my daughter has been doing with you.”
He studied me for a long moment.
“Sir, I can’t share the specifics of a client’s file. But I can tell you this. Whatever you think you’re looking at, you’re wrong. Go home. Talk to her.”
I slid the photo across his desk.
“Somebody sent me a package designed to make me hate her. I want to know who.”
David hesitated.
“I can’t confirm anything. But a woman came in a few weeks back, claiming to be a relative and asking about your daughter’s family paperwork. We turned her away at the front desk. Lily happened to be sitting in our waiting area at the time.”
I frowned.
“I want to know who.”
“I’d bet money that’s how the woman knew to come back and watch for her next appointment. She showed up again the following week, made a scene, and my paralegal caught her photographing pages from a file cart on her way out. We had to change the door codes. And the note you mentioned in that package, I’ve got a threatening letter in my drawer that might match it.”
“Did she leave a name?”
“Jillian.”
“We had to change the door codes.”
The name meant nothing at first. Then it clicked.
Lily had mentioned her once, months back, a woman claiming to be a distant cousin of her birth mother.
My daughter told me she’d shut the conversation down. I had barely registered it.
***
I sat in my car for a long time.
Jillian had wanted something.
Then it clicked.
It could be that she’d twisted the truth into a weapon. She’d stolen a copy of the paperwork Lily had been quietly working on and rewritten it into a lie.
David had only revealed that Lily had meant to buy back the years my job had taken from us.
It seemed my daughter hadn’t been hiding betrayal from me. She’d been hiding a gift.
And I had thrown her out of the house for it.
I started the car and drove toward Rachel’s.
She’d stolen a copy of the paperwork.
***
Lily was sitting on the front steps in an oversized sweatshirt, her eyes swollen from crying.
I sat down next to her and didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I should’ve listened before I accused you of anything.”
Lily wiped her face with her sleeve.
