Before the attorney could respond, the door opened and another man stepped inside carrying a thin black folder, and although I did not turn around I recognized the measured footsteps of Andrew Caldwell, the attorney who had represented my guardian for more than a decade.
Andrew nodded once toward me and then looked calmly at my parents before speaking with the kind of quiet authority that did not need volume to command attention.
“I am afraid the matter is already settled legally,” he said while opening the folder and sliding a document across the table.
The paper contained a court order issued twelve years earlier by a family judge in Providence County, terminating the parental rights of Patrick Cole and Tracy Cole due to abandonment and transferring guardianship to Margaret Dawson.
My father’s expression collapsed from confidence into disbelief while my mother whispered that they had never received such a document, and Andrew replied politely that the court had attempted service several times before discovering that they had moved without providing any forwarding address.
He then placed another document on the table explaining that the court had ordered them to provide child support during my teenage years, an order they had never paid because they had conveniently disappeared from every official record.
My father sputtered angrily while insisting this entire situation was a misunderstanding, yet Andrew calmly explained that they had already attempted two lawsuits during the past decade and both had been dismissed because the law had recognized their abandonment long ago.
My mother began crying while claiming they had only been overwhelmed by raising a difficult child, and I felt the old memory of panic attacks, therapy appointments, and sleepless nights flicker through my mind like scenes from a distant life.
Andrew then removed a handwritten letter from the folder and gave it to Gregory Dalton with instructions written by Margaret Dawson before her death.
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