Chapter 7: Diane's Last Move
Ruth Halliday arrived on a Thursday.
She was a small woman in her early sixties, gray-haired and precise, carrying a document folder pressed against her side like it was something breakable.
She sat across from Cecelia and me at the kitchen table and laid the folder open without ceremony.
Inside was a photocopy of a document dated eighteen years ago.
A temporary placement agreement.
Cecelia's signature at the bottom — rounded letters, unhurried.
Nothing like the jagged, cramped signature on the permanent transfer document that Cecelia had pulled from her own files to place beside it.
The three of us looked at them side by side.
"Two different people signed these," Cecelia said quietly.
"Yes," Ruth said.
I had asked a family attorney — found through a legal aid listing, paid for with money I had saved from a summer job — to be present.
Her name was Patricia Osei.
She sat at the end of the table with a notepad and said very little, but her eyes moved over every document with a steadiness that settled something in me.
"What we have," Patricia said, "is a witnessed original agreement establishing temporary placement and visitation rights, a permanent transfer document bearing a signature that does not match the witnessed original, and a former caseworker prepared to testify to the inconsistency."
"Is that enough?" I asked.
"It's a strong foundation." She set her pen down.
"The cease-and-desist becomes irrelevant the moment you turn eighteen, which is" — she checked the date I had given her — "nine days from now.
At that point, no court will enforce it.
What we focus on is the forgery.
That is a separate matter and the age of the relevant party does not limit it."
"Can it be reported to the police?" Cecelia asked.
"Document forgery in an adoption proceeding is a serious crjme," Patricia said.
"Depending on how the original agency records were altered, there may be additional charges.
That is a conversation for a prosecutor, not for me.
But what I can do is file an emergency motion to preserve all records at Broadview Family Services before anything else gets touched."
"She'll know we're moving," I said.
"She already suspects it." Patricia looked at me.
"She sent that cease-and-desist the same morning you disappeared.
She has been operating in defensive mode since your graduation.
That is not the posture of someone with nothing to worry about."
I thought about Diane sitting in that house right now.
I thought about my father in his study with his blue notebook and his fifteen years of quiet record-keeping and his silence.
"My father," I said.
"He knew.
He didn't act.
But he also didn't destroy the notebook.
He told me where it was."
Patricia considered that.
"His cooperation — or non-cooperation — will matter significantly.
If he is willing to make a voluntary statement, it changes the shape of everything."
I didn't answer immediately.
I thought about him standing at the window with his back to me.
*Third drawer.
Blue notebook.* He had given me the only tool he had and called it nothing.
Said nothing aloud that could be used against him.
Left the door open just wide enough.
"Let me talk to him," I said.
"Alone.
Before any of this moves further."
Patricia nodded once.
That afternoon, I called the house from Patricia's office.
My adoptive mother answered.
"Marcus." Her voice was immediate, controlled.
"Where are you?
You need to come home right now."
"I need to speak to Dad."
"Your father is not available."
"Then I'll wait."
Silence.
"What have you been doing?" she said.
"Who have you been talking to?"
"Is Dad there or not?"
A long pause.
The sound of a door closing somewhere in the house.
My father's voice came on the line.
"Marcus."
"I need to meet you," I said.
"Without her."
Another pause.
I could almost hear him measuring it.
"The coffee shop on Elm," he said.
"Tomorrow at nine."
"Alright."
"Marcus." His voice dropped lower.
May you like
"Don't tell her we spoke."
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