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Back The Ursulina Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. I know you'll never forgive me...
  2. Part One - Your Father
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Part Two - Your Mother
  24. Chapter Twenty-One
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  33. Chapter Thirty
  34. Chapter Thirty-One
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  43. Chapter Forty
  44. Chapter Forty-One
  45. About the Author

I did the only thing I could do, Shelby. I saw only one way to save you. And to save myself.

I wasn’t going to be free to raise you. I was going to prison for murder, for years at least, maybe for the rest of my life. Even if someone from Black Wolf County agreed to take you in, that wasn’t the childhood I wanted for you. Do you think I could live with you seeing me once a month and putting your little hand against mine on the other side of a sheet of glass?

No.

My other choice was to let the state take you away. Except I couldn’t pretend or fool myself. I wasn’t going to have a choice. Murderers don’t get to pick the family to adopt their baby. That’s not how it works. The state was going to take my little girl away and give you to total strangers in some other part of the country, and I would never even know who they were. I would sit in jail, and for the rest of my life, I would have no idea where my daughter was, or what your name was, or whose family you’d joined, or whether they were good to you, or whether you were happy and safe. You were going to disappear from me as completely as if you’d never existed at all. I couldn’t bear that thought.

So I put you in my car, and I drove you far away from here. I drove for hours to the other side of the state. That drive is still so vivid to me, Shelby. That long, long drive. The road was ours, nothing but the glow of my headlights and the immense black forest and the stars overhead. You slept peacefully, with no idea that your little life was about to change forever.

I drove to Mittel County. I drove to Tom Ginn.

I arrived after midnight at his house in the middle of nowhere. I wasn’t sure I was in the right place, because the house looked like a church, glowing with stained glass, with high walls and a steeple rising over the white roof. But when I got out and checked the mailbox, I saw that this was where Tom lived. I took you out of your car seat and secured you in that silly little Easter basket among the paper curlicues. I couldn’t bear to go back home and see the basket sitting there, like a reminder that you were gone.

I put the basket—I put you—at Tom’s doorstep. And I rang the bell.