Chapter 8: What Gerald Ashford Thought He Could Still Control
Catherine Marsh arrived at the estate at eight the next morning with a expression that said the forty-eight hours had not gone the way any of us had wanted.
She set her briefcase on the dining room table, opened it, and laid out three documents in a row.
"Gerald Ashford's position, as of this morning, is that the private adoption placement was handled legally, that the biological mother consented, and that any records held by the agency in question were destroyed in compliance with standard retention policy in 2003." She took off her reading glasses.
"He is also indicating that if Adrian pursues this further, he will file a counter-claim suggesting the Moretti family is attempting to extort the Ashford family using manufactured documents."
Adrian was standing at the window.
He didn't turn around.
"Manufactured," he said.
"He is calling the photographs and the letter forgeries."
"Miss Evie kept those documents for thirty-one years."
"I know."
"My mother wrote that letter."
"I know that too.
But he is betting that challenging authenticity in court takes long enough and costs enough that you'll eventually decide it isn't worth the effort." Catherine folded her hands.
"He's done this before.
Not with something this personal, but the strategy is familiar.
Delay, discredit, exhaust."
Adrian turned from the window.
"What do we have that he can't call into question?"
"Rose Calloway's adoption record itself — which she has and which she's willing to provide — does name the placement agency.
It's dated, official, and in her legal possession.
The agency may claim records were destroyed, but the receiving document is hers." Catherine tapped one of the papers.
"Additionally, the registration she filed in 2019 is a matter of public record within the voluntary adoption system.
That names the agency.
That cannot be retracted."
"And the Ashford connection?"
"That's where we need more.
What we have from Miss Evie's envelope is suggestive but requires corroboration." She paused.
"Unless someone with direct knowledge is willing to make a statement."
Adrian looked at her steadily.
"Vivian said she'd tell us what she knows."
"What she knows may not be enough.
She wasn't told directly."
"There's someone else who was told directly," I said.
They both looked at me.
I had not been planning to speak.
But I thought of something Miss Evie had said in the hospital room — not what she'd said to Adrian, but something earlier, something she'd said quietly when I was straightening her blanket and she was looking at the ceiling.
*Gerald told his wife.
He had to.
She found one of the photographs.
He told her it was a girl he'd known briefly, that the child had been taken care of, that it would never come back to them.*
"Mrs.
Ashford," I said.
"Gerald told his wife at the time.
Miss Evie mentioned it.
She said Gerald's wife found a photograph and he had to explain it."
Catherine was very still.
"Do you know if Mrs.
Ashford is still living?"
"I don't know."
Adrian had already picked up his phone.
He typed something and waited.
"Frances Ashford," he said.
"Gerald's wife.
She's seventy-three.
They divorced in 2008."
Catherine's expression shifted into something that looked almost like relief.
"A former spouse with direct knowledge of a conversation that occurred at the time of the placement," she said carefully, "is a very different kind of witness than a grown daughter working from inference."
Adrian was already dialing.
Not Frances Ashford.
Not yet.
Vivian.
She answered on the second ring.
"Your father told your mother," he said.
"When she found a photograph.
He explained it to her directly.
Do you know anything about that?"
A pause on the line.
"She left him in 2008," Vivian said slowly.
"I always assumed it was the accumulated weight of years.
She never told me specifically why." Another pause.
"But she kept things.
She's a keeper of things, my mother.
Always has been."
"Will you ask her?"
A long silence.
"Yes," Vivian said.
"I'll call her today."
Adrian ended the call.
Gerald Ashford, it turned out, had spent thirty years managing a secret that involved at least three women who had never compared notes.
He was about to discover what happened when they finally did.
Catherine picked up her pen.
"In the meantime," she said, "I'm going to send a letter to Gerald's attorneys today.
I'll make clear that we have the adoption record, the registration, and a credible witness line we are currently developing." She looked at Adrian.
"I'll also make clear that if this goes to litigation, the nature of the allegations becomes public record."
"He won't want that."
"No," she said.
"Men like Gerald Ashford never do."
She began writing.
Outside the window, Chicago was gray and cold.
But inside the dining room, something had shifted in the architecture of the situation — a weight that had been resting comfortably on the wrong side of the scale for three decades was beginning, slowly and with great effort, to move.
May you like
And Gerald Ashford, sitting in his office across the city, did not yet know that the woman he had counted on staying silent for thirty years had kept the conversation he'd had with her the week he'd tried to explain away a green scarf and a photograph hidden at the back of a drawer.
Frances Ashford had kept everything.
