Our meeting in that terminal had not been arranged by anyone, or staged, or timed.

It was a thirty-five-minute mechanical delay, and nothing more.

That night I booked two adjoining suites for the three of them at one of my hotels downtown, and Sabine accepted only after I put the rooms strictly in her name and swore that my mother would have no access to the building.

She also agreed to a court-admissible DNA test — an independent lab, her own attorney present.

She had learned, the hard way, to trust nothing that came from my side of things unverified.