Chapter 5
Ethan sat motionless in the uncomfortable wooden chair, letting Margaret’s words wash over him. The cold precision of her explanation made the betrayal feel even more clinical and calculated. It wasn't a sudden burst of passion or a momentary lapse in judgment; it was a corporate merger where a human being was treated as a liability to be liquidated. He looked around the cluttered room, his gaze resting on a framed certificate from the state social work board hanging crookedly on the wall.
"Where is she now?" Ethan asked, his voice flat and resolute. "I don't care about the politics of thirty years ago. I don't care about my grandfather or what he threatened. I want to know where my sister is."
Margaret reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a manila envelope that looked significantly older and more worn than the one Ethan had brought with him. She placed it carefully in the center of the desk, sliding it across the wood until it rested against his fingertips. "She lives in Portland, Oregon. Her name isn't Clara anymore; they changed it when the adoption was finalized in federal court. She goes by Maya Jensen now. She works as a botanical illustrator for a university press."
Ethan’s fingers brushed against the thick paper envelope. He looked up at the elderly social worker, searching her face for any sign of deception or hesitation. "How do you know she's okay? How do you know she didn't spend her whole life wondering why she was thrown away?"
"I don't know that," Margaret said, her tone softening just enough to reveal a flicker of genuine human sorrow. "Adoption leaves scars, Ethan, no matter how nice the adoptive parents are. Maya had a good upbringing—decent people, stable home, good education. But children always know when they’ve been edited out of a narrative. She spent her twenties looking for biological roots that your father and grandfather spent a fortune keeping buried."
"And you helped them bury it?" Ethan challenged, a sharp edge returning to his voice.
May you like
"I enforced the laws of the state and the wishes of my employers," Margaret answered without flinching. "I am not proud of every file I closed, Ethan. But I kept records. I kept them because I knew that one day, someone like you would come knocking on my door with enough fire in his eyes to burn down the whole system."
Ethan picked up the envelope, sliding the flap open to reveal a single current photograph along with a residential address and a phone number. The woman in the photo had dark hair pulled back into a messy clip, wearing a paint-stained apron while bent over a detailed drawing of a fern leaf. She looked nothing like Eleanor and nothing like Arthur, yet looking at her felt like looking into a mirror that had been tilted just enough to catch a different angle of reality.
