Chapter 2
I remembered.
At the station, the performance got harder for her.
Cameras do not help much when people start asking specific questions.
A child welfare investigator named Ms.
Ortega sat with each kid separately.
Matthew went first.
He came out with his hands shaking but his spine straight.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
He nodded once.
‘I told them the truth.’
Later Ms.
Ortega told me, with more kindness than policy probably allowed, that Matthew never cried during the interview.
He simply listed facts.
Grandpa packed lunches.
Grandpa signed report cards.
Grandpa sat through parent nights.
Grandpa worked two jobs when the roof leaked.
Grandpa was the one who taught him to shave and the one who sat outside the principal’s office when he got suspended in ninth grade for punching a boy who joked that abandoned kids should be grateful for leftovers.
Sophie cried through most of her interview.
Not because she missed Rachel.
Because Rachel had touched Leo for the camera and called him sweetheart like no years had passed.
Sophie told Ms.
Ortega about asthma attacks at three in the morning when I sat beside her in emergency rooms with work boots still on.
She told her how I learned to braid hair badly and then better.
How I kept a drawer full of ribbons because she used to lose them.
How every Mother’s Day in elementary school she came home quiet and I would make pancakes for dinner so the day did not end as badly as it started.
Leo’s interview broke something in me.
He asked Ms.
Ortega if he would be forced to live with the woman who squeezed his face for the camera.
He did not call her Mom.
He called her the woman.
Rachel tried crying again after that.
It did not land.
Ms.
Ortega asked her where Matthew went to school.
She guessed wrong.
She asked which child had asthma.
Rachel pointed to Leo.
She asked for Leo’s middle name.
Rachel got the first letter right and the rest wrong.
She asked when Sophie had last been hospitalized.
Rachel looked at her lawyer.
No answer is louder than a wrong one when children are involved.
By the next morning, the emergency family hearing Rachel had tried to trigger was no longer about rescuing children from a kidnapper.
It was about whether she had made a false report in an attempt to seize custody and access the children’s trusts.
I barely slept the night before court.
Not because I thought I would lose.
Because thirteen years of swallowed anger had finally found a door and I did not know what would happen once it came through.
The courtroom was smaller than I expected.
Rachel arrived in white, like innocence came off a hanger.
Her lawyer carried three binders and confidence.
I carried the yellow envelope in a plain brown folder and wore the only suit I own, the one I bought for Derek’s funeral.
Ramirez testified first.
He described the forced entry, Rachel’s accusation, the children calling me Grandpa, and the moment I asked for the envelope.
‘What drew your attention to the document?’ the court asked.
‘Her reaction,’ Ramirez said.
‘Mr.
Collins was calm.
Ms.
Collins panicked when he asked us to retrieve it.
May you like
She attempted to prevent access to it.
That
