Booktree.ng_Forgotten-Witness

“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Father Ridge answered.
“It must have been him. That’s how Ian knew about me. My
father told him, not my mother. She never remembered me, but
he did.”
Josie closed her eyes and thought back over the last weeks.
She saw Ian Francis’ face and her father’s. They both loved
the same woman and both risked everything to protect Emily’s
daughter. She had been so wrong about so many things. Josie
opened her eyes again, seeing more clearly than she had for a
long while.
“Why didn’t you do something?”
“What your father told me was a confession. He was very
specific. If you read the diary then I could speak freely.” The
priest picked up his glass and finished his port. He looked
toward the ocean. “I often wondered if I would have been as
brave as he was. I was fearful of people who could do such
things. These were people you did not cross.”
“And that was why all those people were wards of Ha Kuna
House,” Josie said. “The administrators could legally make
decisions about their care and no one would question it. My
mother was the exception, but they made sure my father
wouldn’t make trouble. Not knowing if she was alive or dead,
he couldn’t risk telling me before he died.”
Christopher Ridge looked back at her. He folded his hands
on the table. He had aged in the last minutes and looked every
minute of eighty-three years.
“I think he felt most terrible that people thought your
mother had deserted your family. He loved her so much. He
loved you even more. I even think he loved his country, just
not the people who ran it. Not after that.”
Josie took a deep breath and blew it out through her pursed
lips. She said:
“He should have told me.”