Megan looked down at the green bill, then at the heavy red seal stamped on the legal parchment.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I didn’t send those men, Megan, and I didn’t know about our boys,” I said.

She stood frozen in the doorway, her right arm tightening around the sleeping baby.

“They came to the house on a Tuesday in February,” she whispered.

“They stood in my kitchen and told me you owned the fleet and you owned the judges.

They said if I didn’t sign the waiver and leave town, you’d see to it my babies were born wards of the state.”