The principal, sensing the gravity of what was happening far exceeded a routine disciplinary meeting, quietly suggested we move to a private conference room, away from the boys, to continue the conversation.
“Bram told me our second son died,” I said, once we were alone. “He said there was no body to see because I was too weak, that he’d handled everything himself. I never questioned it. Why would I have questioned it?”
Priya’s expression shifted from shock into something considerably more troubled. “The arrangement I went through wasn’t a hospital-facilitated adoption. It was private, facilitated by a man who told me he was the birth father, acting alone because the mother had died in childbirth. I paid a placement fee. I signed private adoption paperwork, notarized outside the hospital’s normal channels.”
“A placement fee,” I repeated slowly. “You paid Bram money for my living son.”
