The first thing I saw when I walked into that Massachusetts courtroom wasn’t the judge, the polished mahogany tables, or the packed gallery whispering behind me. It was my mother rolling her eyes—not a subtle gesture, but the dramatic kind, sharp enough to cut glass. The kind that said here we go again, as if my very presence had ruined her carefully curated tragedy.
I should have expected it. Diane Morrison had spent her entire life rehearsing how to look like the victim, perfecting the art of manufactured suffering until it became her default expression. But what she didn’t expect—what neither of my parents expected—was for Judge Marcus Brennan to look up from shuffling his case notes, freeze mid-motion, and recognize me.
“Wait,” he said slowly, setting his pen down with deliberate care. His gray eyebrows drew together in confusion. “These allegations are against you? You’re the defendant in this matter?”
The courtroom went still, that particular silence that descends when everyone collectively holds their breath. My parents looked confused, like children caught cheating on a test they didn’t even understand. They had no idea who I really was, had never bothered to learn. And that made what came next so much more satisfying.
Because I wasn’t just their abandoned daughter, the infant they’d dropped off like unwanted baggage thirty-two years ago. I was Assistant District Attorney Haley Morrison, senior prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And I’d spent the last decade putting manipulative people exactly like them behind bars.
I was three months old when my mother Diane decided motherhood cramped her style. She was barely eighteen, fresh out of Newton High School, still chasing the attention of my father Scott Morrison—the pride of Massachusetts, a rookie winger for the Boston Bruins with a killer slapshot and a grin that made sports reporters swoon. Their life was supposed to be glamorous: press photos, arena lights, late-night interviews with ESPN. A screaming baby didn’t fit the brand they were building, didn’t photograph well beside champagne bottles and championship trophies.
So they did what selfish people do when reality interferes with fantasy. They drove me to my grandparents’ house in Brooklyn one cold October morning and left me there like a rental car being returned early. No discussion, no plan, no promise to come back. Just gone.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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