The Oilman's Daughter by Evan Ratliff

Author:Evan Ratliff [Ratliff, Evan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781937894245
Publisher: The Atavist
Published: 2013-06-28T07:00:00+00:00

* * *

The family Judith had begun to feel close to, she now saw, had some connection to M. A. Wright beyond just Louise’s several-month affair. Once-cryptic details—Wright’s query, “What’s this about, your grandmother?”—suddenly clicked into place.

And yet the story remained a collection of fragments: Wright had somehow tried to send money and oil deeds to Louise, and maybe even to Judith. They had been intercepted along the way. It was unclear if her mother was a perpetrator or—if her deposition was to be believed—a victim of her own crooked family. Whichever it was, Judith was beginning to suspect that the new family she’d embraced had drawn her close for reasons she’d never imagined.

Still, Judith pressed on with her attempt to nullify her adoption. Even if elements of the family she was joining appeared increasingly sinister, she needed to be legally part of it to attain the place among Wright’s heirs that she so badly wanted. In November 2006, a district judge in Cherokee County, Kansas, issued a judgment voiding Judith’s adoption and confirming the facts of the case as Judith herself now understood them. “Ms. Patterson was born Judy Diane Bryant on January 30, 1956,” he wrote. “Her birth mother was Ethel Louise Harris, also known as Ethel Bryant, and now known as Ethel Louise Williams. Her birth father was Myron A. Wright.”

There it was, at last, on paper. As soon as the verdict came down, Judith started going by Judith Wright Patterson.

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