Judge Castellan didn’t open it immediately. He looked at me, weighing my resolve. “For what purpose, Mr. Chandler? To establish paternity?”
“No, Your Honor,” I replied. “To establish, for the record, that I am not the biological father of any of the three.”
The silence that followed was absolute. I could hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights. I could hear Lenora’s sharp, hitching intake of breath. The judge opened the envelope, scanning the first page, then the second, then the third. His face, usually a mask of judicial boredom, hardened into stone. He looked up from the documents and turned his gaze toward Lenora. The expression was one of profound, controlled disgust.
Then, he said three words that obliterated her world: “Is this true?”
Thirty-six hours earlier, the world had been a different place. I had been sitting in a roadside diner, staring at those same documents until the ink blurred. My coffee was cold, and my eggs sat congealing on the plate. Beside me was Clyde Barrow, a private investigator with a face like weathered leather and eyes that had seen too much human misery.
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