Chapter 18 - The Yellow Boat
Noah was under the kitchen table when I arrived.
His foster mother, June, smiled apologetically.
“He dropped his boat. Now he’s inspecting the furniture.”
I crouched near a chair, leaving space between us. Two solemn eyes watched me from beneath the tablecloth.
“Hello, Noah.”
He looked at June.
“That’s Rosalind,” she told him. “She’s here to visit.”
I had brought nothing. Miriam had suggested that a first meeting did not need presents, and I was grateful for the instruction. Buying something would have been easier than arriving with empty hands and no certainty.
Noah pushed the yellow boat across the floor.
It struck my shoe.
I nudged it gently back.
He retrieved it, considered me, and sent it out again.
For ten minutes, that was our conversation.
June made tea while Miriam sat at the far end of the kitchen, asking ordinary questions about Noah’s week. I listened to the rhythm of his life: a difficult nap, a new word, a fascination with the washing machine.
Eventually, he crawled out and stood beside June’s knee.
“Up,” he said.
She lifted him with practiced ease.
The movement caught somewhere beneath my ribs. I looked down at my hands until I could breathe normally.
Miriam noticed but said nothing.
Later, June showed me how Noah liked his pear cut and where she kept the cloth he carried when he was tired. There was affection in every small instruction. There was sorrow too.
“I’m hoping to keep seeing him,” she said quietly.
“I’d want that,” I answered, then stopped. “If I’m involved. I don’t want to assume.”
June smiled.
“Neither do I.”
When the visit ended, Noah remained in her arms. He raised the boat toward me as I reached the door.
I touched one finger to its rounded bow.
“Goodbye, captain.”
In the car, I cried before starting the engine.
There had been no revelation. He had not reached for me or recognized something mysterious in my face. He was a child who loved the woman caring for him, and I was someone who had rolled a toy across a floor.
That made the meeting feel more precious.
At home, Tobias listened while I described it.
“Will you go again?”
“If they think it would help.”
He nodded and slid a folder across the table.
Helen Ward had found her archived correspondence. One letter confirmed that Bellwether had received notice of the disputed disposal records before my parents died.
Attached was a delivery receipt.
May you like
The signature belonged to the same executive now negotiating with our attorneys.
For the first time, his claim that the problem belonged entirely to former management had a date, a document, and his own name standing against it.
