Megan looked at him for a long while.
Then she reached across the small space between their chairs and placed her hand over his.
It was not a promise.
It was not a reunion.
It was a beginning.
The final court hearing came in June.
By then, the case had become larger than the Bellamys. Hawthorne’s records had opened investigations in three states. Several families were reunited with missing records. Some found grief. Some found answers. A few, like Megan, found living children and complicated miracles.
The courtroom was quiet when Evelyn Bellamy stood to address the judge.
She looked smaller than Rowan remembered. Still elegant. Still proud. But something in her had been weathered down by truth.
Her attorney had advised her not to speak.
Evelyn spoke anyway.
“I told myself I was preserving my family,” she said, hands folded before her. “But I see now that I was preserving my fear. I feared scandal. I feared loss of control. I feared becoming irrelevant in a world my husband understood better than I did.”
