“No,” I said, surprising myself with how calm it sounded. “I was something before the money. I’ll be something after. You, on the other hand, might want to start figuring out who you are without his.”
Inside the house, the sunroom became a room again instead of a stage set.
The ocean hardened and softened in the glass as the light changed.
Donovan came and went with updates. The recordings, legal and otherwise, were devastating.
The mechanic who’d been hired to sabotage the yacht cooperated in exchange for leniency.
Shell companies unfolded their nesting dolls. Board members who had looked away began to remember their last names.
We stayed on the Cape while the case grew teeth.
Officially, Richard remained dead, a witness wrapped in paperwork and caution.
Unofficially, my son made coffee in the morning and took calls late with prosecutors while I made blueberry pancakes because ritual is a way to tell your heart it may continue.
Some afternoons, he and I sat on the back steps with mugs and watched the tide erase footprints.
We talked about everything we’d been too busy to say when life seemed endless.
The fight we’d had two years earlier about Amanda, the way he’d laughed when he first saw his name scroll across a stock ticker, the night he stayed up with me on the hospital floor when Thomas died.
One evening, as the sun smeared orange across the water, he said, “I found out about Pierre before I found out about Amanda. One secret made the other easier to see.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, the words feeling pitiful against the scale of what I was apologizing for. “I should have told you earlier. I should have trusted you with the truth.”
He shook his head.
“You did the best you could with what you had. Thomas was my father. Pierre is my father. Biology and bedtime stories are both real. I get two.”
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