THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 81

I also told her about the day I met Richard Blackwell. The night that I was thrown out, the time I sat at the park bench with one dollar, about the phone call, about room 608 and about how I met Richard Blackwell, Lily and Henry.

I told her about Dr Chen and the envelope and the medical documents and what the calculated dosage actually meant when you were talking about what was done to my mother.

I told her about the eleven years of journals. About Richard writing that he did not have much time left but he had enough. He had to have enough.

When I said that part Sandra wrote something in her notebook.

I told her about Lily, a five year old girl who had lost her parents in a car accident that was not an accident and who had grown up without them because Victoria Pierce had decided they were a problem to be solved.

I told her about the birthday party and the sixty blue morpho butterflies and Lily standing in the middle of the garden with her face turned up watching them rise.

I told her about the grave visit. About standing at my mother's headstone in the cold morning and saying her name out loud. Sarah Blackwell. Finally home.

I told her all of it.

When I finished, the meeting room was very quiet.

Sandra looked at her notebook. Then she looked at me.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Twenty. " I said. This was probably the first time so one was asking about my age. I was pretty young but I carried a burden older than my real age.

She looked at me for a moment in the way people looked at me sometimes when they processed the timeline of the past year. Everything that had happened compressed into the space of months.

"I have been doing this for seventeen years," she said. "I have sat across from a lot of people in a lot of rooms and heard a lot of stories." She paused. "This is the most important one I have heard."

I said nothing.

"I want to tell it properly," she said. "Not as a reaction to Victoria Pierce's document. As its own story. Sarah Blackwell's story." She looked at me carefully. "But I need you to understand what that means. It means it becomes public. Fully public. Your mother's history. Your history. Everything you just told me."

"I know," I said, still not fully prepared for what was to come.

"People will have opinions," she said. "Some of them will not be kind. There will be those who question the timing. Who says this is designed to influence the trial."

“I'm only worried about my little niece. She's only six and I don't want to be out in public at a young age.”

“Hmm.” That was Sandra's response. “I don't really know what we can do. I'm afraid this will deeply affect her.”

I took a deep breath. I knew that was just the truth but somehow, I wanted Sandra to tell me that she wouldn't be affected.

“I don't really care about the trial, I just want the truth about my mother's story to be told before Victoria's version goes too vital to correct it.”

Sandra looked at me for a long moment.

"Can I ask you something personal?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

“Why do you care? I mean your mother is gone already, the legal case is strong regardless of what Victoria wrote. You could win this even with Victoria's confession going wide.” She looked at me steadily. "So why does it matter that the world knows her name?"

I looked at the table for a moment.

Then I looked at Sandra. She didn't understand. Apart from the fact that Victoria was terrible, I had to do this for my mother.

"Because she spent her whole life not knowing who she was," I said. "She woke up with no memory on a street in this city and she built a life from nothing and she worked herself to exhaustion for people who treated her like she did not exist and she died without knowing that she was Richard Blackwell's daughter." I paused. "She died without knowing she was searched for. Without knowing she was missed. Without knowing that her father spent eleven years looking for her and never stopped."

I paused.

"The world knowing her name does not give her any of that back," I said. "I know that. But it gives her something. It puts the real version of her life on the record. It says she was here and she mattered and what was done to her was wrong and she deserved better." I looked at Sandra directly. "She deserves to be known as who she actually was. Not as a footnote in Victoria Pierce's twelve pages. As herself."

Sandra was quiet for a moment.

Then she closed her notebook.

"I will write the piece," she said. "On one condition."

"What condition?" I asked.

"I write it the way I write everything," she said. "Completely and honestly. That means I will also ask Victoria Pierce for a comment. I will also include whatever her legal team wants to say. I will not hide anything that complicates your family's story." She looked at me without blinking. "The truth is the only thing I am interested in. Not a version of it. Not a careful selection of it. All of it. Can you agree to that?"

I looked at her. I thought about it deeply. Did I really want Victoria to comment on my story? Wouldn't she twist everything to make it her own story.

I knew Victoria.

I looked at Sandra again. Washed one of those women who needed to be compensated with money? Should I offer her some?

No. According to Patricia, she doesn't need to be bribed to do her job properly.

"Yes," I said. "That is exactly what I want."

She nodded once. "Then we have an agreement." And stretched out her hands for a handshake. “We will keep in touch.”

After Sandra left Patricia stayed for a few minutes. She looked satisfied, like a woman whose plan worked exactly the way she wanted.

"She will write something significant," Patricia said. "Sandra Wealth does not write small pieces. Whatever she produces will be read widely."

"Good," I said.”I hope so.” I thought.