It Was Never a Gift

So she had gone quiet.

She had studied law instead of making accusations.

She had waited, without quite admitting she was waiting, for the day the noticing might finally be worth something.

She had not expected that day to arrive seven hours after she gave birth.

There was a reason she had kept the father’s name to herself for eight months, and it was not shame, whatever her parents chose to assume.

Adele had met Bram Vandergriff two years earlier, across a negotiating table, of all places — he had been assessing a distressed logistics firm her family’s company did business with, and she had been the only person in the room who answered his questions honestly.