His voice rose. “I was deployed!”
“You had a phone. You had mail. You had lawyers. You had a mother who would have crossed the country if she had known. You had every chance.”
His mouth opened.
Closed.
Then he looked at the children again, and desperation cracked his face.
“I want to speak with them.”
“No,” I said.
Daniel’s anger returned at once. “You cannot keep me from them forever.”
I took a step closer.
The hall seemed to shrink around us.
“You’re right. The law will decide what contact, if any, is in their best interest. But today? Today you do not get to walk into their lives because your pride finally ran out of hiding places.”
He looked as if he wanted to shout.
But behind him, Captain Hale still stood with the folder.
General Paul still watched with disgust.
Margaret still knelt beside four children she had just discovered.
