TERMS OF THE HEART
"I've had considerable time to process this myself, since finding my mother's documentation. You've had considerably less."
She produced, from a worn leather folder, copies of everything she'd mentioned in her original letter — old letters in handwriting I recognised, with genuine dread, from Damien's own childhood photograph albums; financial records showing periodic, unexplained payments from an account eventually traced to Robert Cole's own personal funds; and finally, the paternity test itself, dated nearly three decades earlier.