Page 70 of His Daughter

Thea was standing in the hallway.

I walked to her. She hadn't moved. Her face was pale. I knew why. It wasn't just the custody threat. It wasn't just Kira's fury or the words she'd hurled on her way out. It was what Kira represented — the biological mother, the legal claim, the one person in the world who had standing that Thea never would.

Thea loved this child. She fed Lena. She bathed her. She sang to her in the dark. She knew the temperature of her formula by wrist-touch, the meaning of every different cry, the exact pressure of hold that turned screaming into silence.

She was Lena's mother in every way that mattered and in no way that a courtroom would recognize.

On paper, she was no one.

I stood in front of her and put my hands on her arms. Her skin was cool. She was trembling.

She looked up at me. Her dark eyes were wide. The amber ring caught the hallway light. Lena's fist tightened on her collar in sleep.

"No one is taking Lena away from us." I held her gaze. "No one."

NINETEEN

THEA

Two lawyers sat at the dining table. A woman named Priya, dark hair pinned back, had already filled half a legal pad with tight handwriting. Beside her sat a younger man named Elliot, his laptop open, case files arranged in a row like soldiers. Declan sat at the head of the table. I sat across from them. Lena was in the baby swing beside me, her feet kicking lazily, her hand batting at the stuffed star that dangled from the arch.

"Ms. Calloway." Priya uncapped her pen. "Let's walk through the timeline."

"Okay."

"Kira Solis filed for custody four days ago. The court has set a hearing date three weeks from today. Before that hearing, the court requires a mediation attempt, scheduled for two weeks from now." She wrote the dates on her legal pad and turned it so I could see. "That gives us fourteen days to build the strongest possible case."

Elliot pulled up a document on his laptop. "We'll need to walk through the full timeline with you, starting from the adoption."

I folded my hands on the table. "What do you need to know?"

"When did you first apply with Bright Horizons?"

"Fourteen months before the placement was scheduled. My husband and I submitted the initial application together."

"And the baby you were matched with — that was Lena?"

"Yes. We received the file before the scheduled placement. Baby girl. Heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of her left wrist. That detail was in the file."

Priya wrote. Elliot typed. The baby swing clicked softly as Lena kicked.

"Walk us through the day the adoption fell through," Priya said.

I told them everything from Janet's office: the phone call, the wait, the birth mother changing her mind. The file was still open in my lap. I told it the way I told Margot — plainly and factually.

Priya's pen moved without stopping. "And the night the baby appeared on your doorstep?"

"I heard crying. I opened the door. She was there, wrapped in a blanket, tucked against the doorframe. There was a note." I paused. "'She's yours now. I'm sorry.'"

"Did you see anyone leave?"

"No. Just the baby."

"And you recognized her."

"I saw the birthmark — the same one described in the adoption file I'd memorized." I looked at my hands on the table. "I knew it was the same baby."

Elliot leaned forward. "Ms. Calloway, you kept the baby overnight without contacting authorities. Can you explain why?"