Chapter 10: The Morning After Everything
Three weeks later, on a Saturday, I woke up before the children.
I made coffee.
One cup.
Set the second mug back in the cabinet without thinking about it, and only noticed what I'd done when I was already sitting at the kitchen table.
The house was quiet in a way it hadn't been in years.
Not the brittle quiet of a house waiting for something to go wrong — just quiet.
Morning light on the floor.
The sound of a bird outside the window.
Natalie had called the day before with a final update.
The DA's office had formally charged Grant and David Pryce with fraudulent conveyance and conspiracy to conceal marital assets.
Clifford Hale was under separate investigation by the state bar and faced the possibility of disbarment.
The charges would take time to move through the system, as these things always did.
But they were moving.
Patricia had called me the week before.
I had answered.
"I want you to know," she said, "that I'm sorry.
For all of it.
For the years I saw things and told myself it wasn't my place."
I had thought about what to say for a moment.
"Thank you for the text," I said finally.
"It mattered."
"Will you — " She stopped.
"Will you let me see the children?"
"Yes," I said.
"They love you.
That hasn't changed."
She had cried then, quietly, and I had let her.
Tessa had moved out of the house the morning after the settlement was signed.
I didn't know where she had gone, and I found that I didn't need to.
Owen came downstairs at seven-fifteen, still in his pajamas, hair going in four directions.
"Is there cereal?" he asked.
"Top shelf," I said.
He climbed onto the counter to reach it, which I was technically not supposed to allow.
I watched him and said nothing.
Lily appeared ten minutes later, dragging the stuffed rabbit by one ear.
She climbed into the chair beside me and leaned her head against my arm without saying anything.
I put my hand on top of her head.
The three suitcases were still in the closet upstairs.
I hadn't unpacked them yet.
I kept meaning to, and then finding something else to do.
But this morning, I thought, I would do it.
I would take out what was in them and put it away properly, in the right places, in the right drawers, in the house that was mine.
Owen poured too much cereal and looked at me to see if I would say something.
I raised an eyebrow.
He poured some back.
Outside, the morning was bright and unremarkable and entirely ours.
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Some people spend years being told they have nothing — only to discover they had been building everything all along.
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