Chapter 22 - The Condition of Meeting
The release request was real.
Martin Voss had filed a petition claiming Lorraine possessed information essential to resolving a disputed adoption and should be transferred temporarily to a treatment facility.
He had submitted it without Lorraine’s current attorney.
The petition was unlikely to succeed, but it revealed Martin’s urgency.
He needed Lorraine outside the prison.
Detective Bennett arranged for Jake and Megan to meet Leah in a private room inside a county courthouse.
Leah entered through a separate security entrance.
Jake recognized her immediately.
She had Andrew’s eyes.
Leah stopped several feet from him. For a long moment, neither spoke.
Then Grace laughed from Megan’s arms.
The sound broke the tension.
Leah smiled despite herself.
“She looks like Celia,” Leah said.
“Your adoptive mother?” Jake asked.
“My mother,” Leah corrected gently. “Celia and Daniel raised me. Whatever the records say, that does not change.”
Jake nodded.
“I understand.”
Leah placed her silver locket on the table. Inside was a photograph of Celia holding her as a baby. The locket had originally belonged to Lorraine’s mother, confirming that someone connected to the Sullivan family had placed it with Leah.
She also brought the envelopes she had received.
Forensic examination revealed they had been printed using the same rare toner found on Martin’s office printer.
But Martin’s fingerprints were absent.
“He may have had an employee send them,” Bennett said.
Leah shook her head.
“Martin didn’t send the final envelope.”
She opened it.
Inside was a photograph of Lorraine’s hidden nursery.
The image had been taken before police searched the house.
On the back was a handwritten sentence:
SHE BUILT THE WRONG NURSERY TWICE.
Megan felt the room grow colder.
“Twice?”
Leah removed another photograph.
It showed a different nursery in a house no one recognized.
May you like
A date was printed in the corner.
It had been taken three months before Jake was born.
