Part 2: The Truth Exposed

The auditorium dropped into a silence so deep that even the teachers stopped shuffling their papers.

Simon drew a deep, shaky breath and fixed his gaze firmly on Joanna, pointedly ignoring Denise.

“When I was three weeks old, someone left me in the arms of a twenty-two-year-old girl who’d just earned a life-changing scholarship,” he began, his voice thick with emotion.

“She could have walked away. She could have said no. She could have lived the life she’d worked so hard to build. But she stayed.”

Dorothy dropped her eyes to the floor, and George’s jaw tightened until his face turned a pale, sickly grey.