PART 3 — DOLORES’S VOICE
Judge Brooks removed his glasses.
“Bailiff, take the recorder.”
A uniformed officer walked to Ethan and carefully took it from his shaking hands.
Mercer’s face had gone pale now.
“Your Honor, this is improper. There is no foundation. No authentication.”
Judge Brooks looked at him.
“Then you should have no reason to fear it.”
The bailiff connected the recorder to the court speaker.
For one second, there was only static.
Then a woman’s voice filled the courtroom.
Old.
Tired.
Terrified.
“My name is Dolores Hart. I worked for Charles Mercer. If this recording is being played, then I failed to stop what he did quietly.”
Maya began crying harder.
Ethan closed his eyes.
The recording continued.
“The Cole baby was not stillborn. He was alive. The records were changed. The Bennett family paid through a private foundation. Mr. Mercer handled the documents.”
Charles Mercer whispered, “No.”
But Dolores’s voice kept going.
“Maya Cole never signed adoption papers. Her signature was forged. The baby was moved before morning. Mr. Mercer said poor women lose children every day and nobody important asks questions.”
A woman in the gallery gasped.
Judge Brooks’s face hardened.
The recording crackled again.
Then another voice appeared.
A man’s voice.
Mercer’s voice.
“Change the file. The mother gets a death certificate. The Bennetts get the boy. Dolores, do not grow a conscience this late in life.”
The courtroom froze.
Maya slowly lowered her hands from her mouth.
She looked at Oliver.
The child she had buried in her heart.
The child standing alive beside his brother.
Ethan opened his eyes and looked at Mercer.
“You called my mom crazy,” he said. “But she was right.”
Mercer stumbled back from the table.
“This is fabricated.”
Oliver suddenly lifted his head.
His small voice trembled.
“I remember the song.”
Everyone turned to him.
Maya stopped breathing.
Oliver looked at her through tears.
“The lady from the picture sang it. The turtle song.”
Maya broke completely.
May you like
Because she had sung that song to Oliver for only one night.
The night he was born.
