“I don’t know what I’m ready for.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You get to choose the pace. But I need you to know one thing. There has always been a place for you in this family. Even when I thought you were gone.”
His mouth trembled.
“I spent so long thinking I was the baby nobody could keep.”
I shook my head.
“No. You were the baby someone took choices away from.”
Rowan reached over and rested his hand on my arm.
“Thank you for fighting for me, Dawn.”
Hearing him call me by my name tightened something inside my chest.
It hurt.
But it was truthful.
And after eighteen years built around a lie, truth was enough.
“I’m requesting every record,” I said. “Then I’m speaking to a lawyer. Doctor Jefferson and my mother don’t get to hide behind eighteen years of silence.”
