Chapter 3
The limo ride home was silent.
Judith held my hand the whole way.
She didn’t say “I told you so.”
She never did.
That’s why she was the only person in the world I trusted completely.
We pulled up to my house—the white colonial Frank had built for us when Jackson was born, the one with the big oak tree in the front yard he’d planted the day we brought our baby home from the hospital.
The house was dark.
I unlocked the front door.
We stepped inside.
That’s when I saw it.
The door to Frank’s study was wide open.
My stomach dropped.
I never left that door open.
Never.
I ran down the hallway, my heels clicking on the hardwood.
Judith followed right behind me.
I flipped on the light.
The room was destroyed.
Frank’s old oak desk was ransacked—drawers pulled out, papers scattered everywhere.
The framed photo of us on our wedding day was shattered on the floor.
I ran to the built-in safe in the closet.
The door was pried open, the metal bent and twisted.
It was empty.
I fell to my knees.
Frank’s gold watch—the one his father had given him, the one he’d worn every single day of our marriage, the one he’d told me to give Jackson when he was ready to be a man—it was gone.
His Purple Heart from the Army, the one he’d earned saving three men in Vietnam, the one he’d only taken out once a year on Veterans Day—it was gone.
The stack of letters he’d written me while he was deployed, tied with a blue ribbon—gone.
The only thing left inside the safe was a single photo.
Natalie and Jackson, grinning on a beach in Cabo, her arm wrapped tight around his waist.
She’d left it there on purpose.
A taunt.
A reminder that she’d been inside the most sacred part of our home.
I let out a sound I didn’t recognize.
Half sob, half scream.
Judith knelt beside me and pulled me into her arms.
I cried harder than I had since the day Frank died.
I cried for my hair.
For my dress.
For the wedding day that had turned into a nightmare.
But mostly I cried for Frank.
For the pieces of him she’d stolen that I could never get back.
I cried until I had no tears left.
Then my phone rang.
I pulled it out of my purse.
Jackson’s name lit up the screen.
I swiped to answer, my voice raw.
“Jackson?”
He was yelling.
Drunk, furious, out of his mind.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he screamed. “You ruined everything! Natalie is in the hotel room hysterical! She says she’s gonna kill herself! This is all your fault!”
I closed my eyes.
“She robbed us, baby,” I said, quiet. “She broke into the house. She took your father’s watch. His medal. His letters. Everything.”
He laughed, bitter and ugly.
“I don’t care about that stupid old stuff!” he shouted. “She’s my wife! You embarrassed her in front of two hundred people! You made her look like a monster!”
“Jackson, she is—”
“Shut up!” he cut me off. “I never want to hear your voice again. You want to know why she did all that? Because you never let her in! You treated her like garbage from day one! You pushed her to this!”
The words cut deeper than any knife.
My own son.
Blinding me to the woman who’d hurt me.
“Jackson, please,” I whispered. “Just come home. We can talk about this. We can fix it.”
“Go to hell,” he said.
Then he hung up.
I dropped the phone on the floor.
It skittered across the carpet and hit the leg of the desk.
Judith picked it up.
She didn’t say anything.
She just held me tighter.
I sat there on the floor of Frank’s ransacked study for a long time, staring at the empty safe.
I thought about the day we’d brought Jackson home.
Frank had held him so gently, like he was made of glass.
He’d looked at me and said, “We’re gonna teach him to be a good man, El. The kind who protects the people he loves.”
Where had that little boy gone?
When had he turned into someone who would choose a liar over his own mother?
I stood up slowly.
My knees ached.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
I walked to Frank’s desk.
I picked up the broken frame of our wedding photo.
I brushed the glass off Frank’s face.
“I won’t let her win,” I whispered to him. “I don’t care what it takes. I’ll get our things back. I’ll get our son back. I promise.”
Judith stood beside me.
“Whatever you need,” she said. “I’m right here.”
That night, I slept on the couch in the study.
I didn’t want to be in the bedroom where she’d touched my things, where she’d shaved my head while I slept.
I held the only photo of Frank I had left—the one on my phone.
I stared at it until my eyes burned.
Somewhere in the middle of the night, I made a decision.
Natalie had declared war.
She’d attacked my home, my reputation, my family.
She’d underestimated me.
Badly.
I was no longer just fighting for money or for Frank’s things.
May you like
I was fighting for the soul of my son.
And I would burn the whole world down before I let her take him from me.
