She owed Desmond nothing — less than nothing.

And instead of vanishing, instead of protecting herself and her daughter and letting the man who abandoned them fade into the past he’d chosen, she wired him money.

Every month.

Money she did not have, packing boxes through the night to earn it, sending it to the very household that had cast her out — because Junia’s threat had made her believe her parental rights were fragile, and a mother who fears losing her child will pay any ransom, bear any injustice, to keep her.

And she signed each payment From Posy Merrick, giving her daughter her father’s name on every transfer, insisting on the child’s legitimacy and the child’s claim even as that father sat in a dark house believing the worst of her.

There was no bitterness in those memo lines.