Chapter 77 - The Broken Pedestal
Melissa spun around, dropping her cigarette onto the floorboards with a choked shriek. "Nora!"
Greg’s hands flew to the table drawer, but before his fingers could close around whatever weapon he kept hidden beneath the ledgers, I brought the iron bar down across the edge of the desk with all the force of my body. The wood splintered with the sound of a rifle shot. The drawer jammed shut, trapping the cuffs of his sleeve in the cracked seam.
Greg howled, stumbling back against the stone fireplace, clutching his bruised fingers.
"Stay back, both of you," I said, my voice steady, dangerously quiet, the fury of nearly a decade crystallizing into pure, unyielding resolve. "Take one step toward that ladder, Melissa, and you will leave this room in an ambulance."
Melissa backed against the timber wall, her face draining of color until she looked like a cheap imitation of her mother. "Nora... you don't understand! They made me do it! Mother threatened to cut me off completely! She found the old medical records from Boston—she knew I wasn't married when Lily was born! She was going to tell Greg’s family everything!"
"You sold her," I said, pointing the iron bar at her chest. "You sold her the day you left her on my porch in that ruined Easter dress, and you sold her again tonight for fifty thousand dollars of Evelyn’s blood money."
"She’s my daughter!" Melissa screamed, her voice cracking in hysterical indignation. "Legally, she’s mine! The birth certificate has my name on it!"
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"Then explain to me why your mother has a codicil signed in 1974," I said coldly, stepping between them and the loft ladder. "Explain why Evelyn spent forty years hiding the diocesan deed if the girl was yours."
Melissa froze, her mouth hanging open. A flicker of genuine incomprehension passed across her face, replaced instantly by the realization that she had been used just as thoroughly as everyone else.
