Chapter 9: The Arrest
Javier was arrested on a Tuesday.
Daniel took the call while I was in the backyard pulling weeds — something I hadn't done in months, something that felt important to do with my hands while I waited.
He came out through the back door and stood at the edge of the patio.
"They got him," he said.
I straightened up slowly.
"Nashville?" I asked.
"Just outside it.
He was at a diner.
They said he was eating breakfast when they walked in." Daniel paused.
"He didn't run."
I thought about that.
The man who had grabbed me by the collar, who had told me I was nothing, who had spent four decades of my savings on steakhouse dinners and a pickup truck — sitting in a diner booth when the officers came through the door.
"What are the charges?" I asked.
"Financial exploitation of an elderly adult.
Elder @buse.
Identity theft.
Wire fraud." Daniel looked at his phone.
"They're also coordinating with Arizona on the Trent connection.
Okafor said that could add federal charges."
"Federal."
"Wire fraud across state lines.
Possibly conspiracy." He put his phone away.
"His attorney is already filing for bail.
Okafor says given the flight risk — he drove four hundred miles the night the police came — they'll argue for it to be denied or set very high."
I looked at the yard.
The weeds I'd pulled were in a small pile near the fence.
The garden Elena had planted along the back wall had gone ragged without anyone tending it — the roses overgrown, the lavender half-dead.
"Your mother would have had something to say about that lavender," I said.
Daniel came and stood beside me.
"She would have said you let it get too dry."
"She would have been right."
We stood there for a moment.
"Dad," he said, "I need to ask you something.
And I need you to answer honestly, not the way you think I want you to answer."
"All right."
"Are you okay?"
I considered the question the way it deserved to be considered.
"I'm not the same as I was before they came," I said.
"I don't know if I will be.
But I'm in my own house.
I slept in my own bed last night.
I'm pulling weeds in my own yard." I looked at the lavender.
"I think that's the beginning of okay."
He nodded.
"Good enough," he said.
Inside, Gabriela was on the phone with Detective Okafor, giving her third full statement.
I could hear her voice through the kitchen window — steady, detailed, not flinching from the parts that made her look bad.
She had been doing that for three days.
Every time Okafor called, she answered.
Every question, she answered fully.
It wasn't enough to undo what had happened.
But it was something.
Daniel's phone buzzed again.
He looked at it and then held it out to me.
It was a text from a number I didn't recognize.
No name.
May you like
Just a message.
*Tell your father this isn't over.*
