Chapter 8
The next week was a blur.
Diane was denied bail.
The district attorney charged her with attempted murder, kidnapping, assault, fraud, child endangerment, and—after the mechanic confirmed the tool marks on the old brake line reports from thirty years ago—murder in the first degree for Ethan’s father.
She was facing life without parole.
No one in town would talk to her.
No lawyer would take her case for free.
And all the friends she’d had for forty years?
Suddenly, they all remembered “how strange she’d always been.”
Noah came home two days after the shooting.
The social workers apologized.
Said they’d been fooled.
That Diane had been very convincing.
I didn’t forgive them.
But I didn’t fight them either.
I just held my son and promised myself I’d never let anyone take him from me again.
The bank called three days later.
Ethan’s birthday had come.
The money was his.
All two million of it.
Plus interest.
Plus the house.
Plus the fifty acres of land Diane had been secretly selling off bit by bit—money she’d been hiding in offshore accounts the police were now freezing.
By the end of the week, Ethan was worth nearly three million dollars.
We sat at the kitchen table every night, going through Diane’s papers.
Finding more lies.
More secrets.
She’d been stealing from Ethan since he was eighteen.
Siphoning off thousands of dollars a month.
Spending it on plastic surgery.
Trips to Europe.
Gifts for men half her age.
One night, we found a journal.
Diane’s private diary.
Entries going back twenty-five years.
I read them while Ethan put Noah to bed.
Page after page of pure, unadulterated evil.
*Ethan cried today because I told him his dad left because of him. Good. Fear is better than love. Love leaves. Fear stays.*
*Sarah’s pregnant. I’ll make sure she regrets that. No one takes my boy from me.*
*Emily’s too smart. She sees through me. I have to break her before she breaks me. The kennel was a good start. Next time, I’ll make it look like she hurt herself.*
The last entry was dated the morning she’d locked me in the kennel.
*Tomorrow, I take everything. By this time next week, they’ll all be gone. And I’ll finally be free of them all. Finally alone with what’s mine.*
I closed the journal and threw it in the fire.
Some truths were too ugly to keep.
Sarah came over the next night.
Her arm was in a sling, but she was smiling.
Noah sat between us on the couch, watching a movie.
He’d asked a hundred questions about her.
And she’d answered every one of them honestly.
No lies.
No sugarcoating.
Told him about the drugs.
About leaving.
About how sorry she was.
Noah had thought about it for a long time.
Then he’d said, “Can you be my bonus mom? Like in the movies?”
Sarah had cried then.
We all had.
Now, as he slept with his head on her lap, she looked at me.
“I got a job offer in Portland,” she said quietly. “Good money. Good school district. I was thinking… maybe Noah could come visit sometimes. For a week in the summer. A few days at Christmas. If that’s okay with you.”
I looked at her.
At the woman who’d been my enemy in my head for so long.
Who’d turned out to be the only person besides Ethan who’d had our backs.
“Or,” I said, “you could move in with us. We have five bedrooms. More money than we know what to do with. And Noah needs you. We need you.”
She blinked.
“Really?”
“Really. Diane’s gone. This house is too big for just three people. And… I don’t want to do this alone. Not all of it. The lawyers. The trials. The healing. I could use a friend.”
She smiled through tears.
“I’d like that. A lot.”
Ethan came in with three glasses of wine.
He’d heard.
“Good,” he said, handing us each a glass. “Because I have something to tell you both. Something I’ve been thinking about all week.”
He sat down across from us.
“I’m not pressing charges against Diane for what she did to me. The kidnapping. The gun. All of it.”
Sarah and I both started to protest.
He held up a hand.
“Let me finish. I’m not pressing those charges because I don’t want this to be about me. I want it to be about Dad. About what she did to him. Thirty years. She got away with it for thirty years. If I pile on a dozen more charges, her lawyer will drag this out for years. Plea bargains. Mistrials. Appeals. She’ll die in a hospital bed before she ever sees the inside of a cell.”
He looked at the journal burning in the fireplace.
“But the murder charge? That’s different. The DA says with the note and the mechanic’s report and her own confession to me that night… it’s a slam dunk. Life without parole. No possibility of appeal. She’ll be dead before she’s eligible for anything. And that’s what I want. For her to spend every single day of the rest of her life in a cell smaller than that dog kennel she put Emily in. Thinking about what she did. Alone. Exactly what she always said she was so scared of.”
He raised his glass.
“To Dad. Who waited thirty years to get his justice. And to us. Who get to live the rest of our lives free.”
We clinked glasses.
Outside, the Georgia pines swayed in the wind.
May you like
Somewhere, a dog barked.
And for the first time since we’d moved into that house, I felt safe.
