Greer stared at the ceiling.
“He said, ‘If I see them, I won’t be able to leave.’”
Margaret lowered her hands.
Her face was unrecognizable.
Captain Hale paused.
“Mr. Greer, why come forward now?”
The old aide’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because I watched Mrs. Reynolds meet those children last Christmas. I helped steal them from her. I thought loyalty meant obedience. It didn’t. It meant cowardice.”
The recording ended twenty minutes later.
No one spoke in my office.
Lena stood behind me, one hand on the back of my chair.
I stared at the blank screen.
The anger did not come first.
Grief did.
Huge, black, endless grief.
Because some small part of me had allowed the children a version of Daniel who had truly not known. A coward, yes. A liar, yes. But one who had never seen their newborn faces and turned away.
Now that version died too.
