“Sweetheart,” she said, when she could speak. “She was never for sale.
And you already brought her home.
You did that. Not the money.
You.”
PART 5 — FINAL
We named her Grace.
It had been the name all along, the one Eli picked, the one we’d painted in tiny letters on the pale yellow wall.
She came home to that yellow room at last, to the crib that had haunted me, to the stuffed rabbit her brother spent three weeks choosing, because every little sister needs somebody to sleep with.
Eli sleeps on her floor sometimes, still, on a little camp mattress, “just to guard her.”
I let him.
I think we both needed a while to believe she wouldn’t disappear again.
Grant took a plea.
Fraud, forgery, and his role in what the state, in the end, prosecuted as trafficking of a minor.
The number of years is large.
