“Someone sent me a package designed to hate her. I want to know who it was.”
David hesitated.
“I can’t confirm anything. But a few weeks ago came a woman who claimed to be a family member and asked about her daughter’s family documentation. We reject it at the reception. By chance, Lily was sitting in our waiting room at the time.”
I put a grimace.
“I want to know who.”
“I bet that’s how the woman knew I should come back and wait for their next date. She reappeared the following week, raised a scandal and my paralegal caught her photographing pages of a file cart on her way out. We had to change the door codes. And as for the note you mentioned in that package, I have a threatening letter in my drawer that could be the same.”
“Did you leave any name?”
“Jillian.”
“We had to change the gate codes.”
The name meant nothing at first. So, everything made sense.
Lily had mentioned her name once, months ago, a woman who claimed to be a distant cousin of her biological mother.
My daughter told me she was going to finish the conversation. I barely noticed.
I sat in the car for a long time.
Jillian wanted something.
So it all made sense.
You may have distorted the truth to use it as a weapon. She stole a copy of the documentation in which Lily had been working in secret and rewrote it, making it a lie.
David only revealed that Lily intended to recover the years my work had stolen from us.
Apparently, my daughter was not hiding a betrayal from me. I was hiding a gift.
And I kicked her out of the house for that.
I started the car and drove to Rachel's house.
He had stolen a copy of the documentation.
Lily was sitting on the steps of the entrance, with a sweatshirt too big, her eyes swollen from so crying.
I sat next to him and kept quiet for a long time.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have heard before I accused her of anything.”
Lily wiped her face with her sleeve.
My eyes were swollen with so much crying.
“I heard you and Mark talking in the kitchen,” he said quietly. “Months ago. You told her you were exhausted, that your back hurt at every step. That you didn’t know how much longer you could hold.”
