The arguments raged on TV, in talk shows, in newspapers. Should Baby Rose go back to her biological parents? Yes, said some. They had been declared innocent. They never should have served time. Rose is their daughter. Wouldn’t you want your daughter back?

What about visitation? Surely Johnny and Betsy deserved visitation with their daughter. Yes, said some. No, said others.

On and on.

The judge paid no mind to the circus outside his courtroom doors. He had six kids. He couldn’t imagine losing any of them, but he ruled for keeping Rose with her adoptive parents. “This is a tragedy for everyone,” he intoned.

Betsy sobbed, broken. Johnny felt sick, his face stricken with grief. Tilly shook.

Frieda, metaphorical hatchet up and raised, asked for the records to be unsealed so Johnny and Betsy could visit Rose.

No.

Frieda, wanting to kick some butt, asked if the birth records could be unsealed when Rose was eighteen. She would be an adult then, able to make her own decisions.

No.

Johnny and Betsy lost. The records were sealed forever, as the law required then. Rose would stay where she was.

Johnny and Betsy cried in court. The judge was sympathetic. Even the opposing attorney for the state was sympathetic. Frieda the hatchet swinger was sympathetic but super pissed off. She hated losing.

* * *

Johnny and Betsy went home to their one-hundred-year-old rambling farmhouse in the country that day and cried again. They cried with Tilly. They cried in their garden, they cried as they lay in bed, their arms empty, their hearts battered. All through the long, dark years of imprisonment, where Johnny and Betsy were both beaten down by the fear and isolation, the abuse and deprivations, they had clung to the hope that they would see each other again, see Tilly, and see Rose.

They had lost Rose again, and they went down a long black tunnel for months. It was as if she’d been taken from them all over again, and the grief clawed at every ounce of happiness.

The longing to see her never went away. The love never went away. They clung to hope that one day something would change and they would see her. They clung to a future they wanted, even when it seemed impossible. They clung to each other, their love unending, even when their tears mixed for the daughter who was out there . . . somewhere.

Betsy and Johnny took a leap three years later and opened a small grocery store about fifteen minutes from their home. The building had been a saloon eighty years ago, then a saddle and boot store, then farming equipment. It had been unoccupied for ten years.