Chapter 10: After
The sentence was eighteen months, suspended, with two years of probation, mandatory financial restitution, and a requirement to complete a court-approved program.
Paula explained that the suspended sentence reflected his cooperation in the Farrell investigation, which had resulted in three additional charges against Farrell himself — charges that carried considerably more weight than Gareth's.
Dominic Farrell's attorney was no longer taking calls from journalists by the time his own case moved forward.
The charity gala photograph disappeared from the councilman's website.
These things happened quietly, the way they always do when powerful men begin to understand that the walls are actually closing.
I didn't follow Farrell's case closely.
Paula kept me informed of the broad strokes.
That was enough.
---
On the Saturday after the hearing, Nora asked if we could plant something in the backyard.
"Plant what?" I asked.
"I don't know.
Something that comes back every year."
We went to the garden center that afternoon.
She walked the rows of dormant bulbs with great seriousness, reading the little plastic labels, rejecting several options for reasons she didn't fully explain.
She stopped in front of a flat of tulip bulbs.
Red ones.
"These," she said.
We bought two bags.
Spent the afternoon on our knees in the cold dirt, Nora following the instructions on the packet with the focused precision she brought to everything she decided mattered.
"How long until they come up?" she asked.
"Spring.
Maybe April."
She pressed the last bulb into the ground and patted the soil over it with both hands.
"That's a long time to wait."
"It is," I said.
"But they'll come."
She sat back on her heels and looked at the row of small mounded patches.
Satisfied.
The way she looked when a puzzle was finished or a drawing came out right.
"Mommy," she said.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you said no."
I looked at her.
She was still looking at the garden, her small hands dark with soil, the late afternoon light catching the side of her face.
"At the wedding," she said.
"When Uncle Gareth told you to move.
I'm glad you said no."
I put my arm around her.
She leaned in without looking away from the garden.
"Me too," I said.
We stayed like that for a while, in the cold and the quiet, until the light went and it was time to go inside.
The tulips came up in April.
Red, every one of them, exactly as promised.
---
Some people are chosen as targets because someone believes they won't fight back.
Nora was eight years old and she still knew the difference between right and wrong better than the adults who were supposed to protect her.
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