Chapter 6
The rest of the reception passed in a blur.
Victoria left early, without saying goodbye to anyone. Raymond was nowhere to be seen.
Sabrina and Logan cut the cake. They threw the bouquet. They danced with their friends.
I watched from my table, sipping coffee. I was tired. Emotionally drained. But I felt lighter than I had in years.
The truth was out.
When the reception ended, Sabrina found me by the entrance.
“Dad,” she said. “Can we talk tomorrow? I want... I need to explain everything. And I want to hear what you’re going to do.”
“Tomorrow is fine,” I said.
“Logan and I are leaving for our honeymoon the day after,” she said. “But I’ll call you every day. I promise.”
“Enjoy your honeymoon,” I said. “That’s what matters right now.”
She hugged me tightly.
“I love you, Dad,” she said.
I hesitated for just a moment, then hugged her back.
“I love you too,” I said.
I drove home alone.
The house was dark and quiet. Victoria’s car was gone. Her closet was half-empty. She’d taken her clothes and jewelry and left.
Good.
I went to my workshop. The scraps of the ruined suit were still on the floor where I’d left them. I swept them up and threw them in the trash.
Then I sat down at my sewing machine.
I didn’t sew anything. I just sat there, thinking about the last nineteen years.
I’d met Victoria at a difficult time in her life. She was young, scared, alone with a baby. I’d fallen in love with her, or at least with the idea of being the man who rescued her.
But you can’t rescue someone who doesn’t want to be saved. You can’t love someone into being faithful. You can’t work hard enough to earn respect from people who only value what you can give them.
I’d spent nineteen years trying to be enough.
And I’d finally realized that I was enough. Just not for them.
The next morning, Eleanor called.
“Victoria’s attorney contacted me,” she said. “She’s willing to negotiate. She’ll sign the divorce papers, return what’s left of the stolen money, and accept a small settlement. In exchange, we won’t press criminal charges against her.”
“And Raymond?”
“Victoria is willing to testify against him,” Eleanor said. “She’s angry. He abandoned her again, and she wants revenge. If we grant her immunity for her testimony, she’ll help us build a case against him for receiving stolen property and fraud.”
I thought about it.
“Make the deal,” I said. “But I want the house and the workshop free and clear. No claims. No appeals. And I want full disclosure of every bank account, every transfer, every secret.”
“I’ll draw it up,” Eleanor said.
That afternoon, Sabrina came over.
She looked different. Younger somehow, without the weight of all those secrets.
We sat in the living room. The family photographs were still on the table—the one where my face was folded backward. Sabrina picked it up, unfolded it, and looked at it for a long time.
“I remember when this was taken,” she said. “It was my high school graduation. You’d just finished paying off my tuition. Mom told me to fold your face back because she wanted to send a copy to Raymond and didn’t want him to see you.”
She put the frame back down, properly this time, with my face visible.
“I’m not making excuses,” she said. “But I want you to understand. Mom has been manipulating me for years. She’d say things like ‘Your father works so hard, we don’t want to burden him’ or ‘Raymond understands what it’s like to be young and ambitious.’ She made it seem like you were... well, like you were good but not good enough. Like you loved me but couldn’t possibly understand me.”
She looked at me directly.
“I was wrong. So wrong. You’ve always understood me. You’ve always been there. I just... I let her convince me otherwise. And I let Raymond charm me. He told me stories about how he’d always loved me, how he’d been forced to leave, how he’d come back to make things right. I wanted to believe him. I wanted that storybook reunion.”
“Stories are easy,” I said. “Raising a child is hard.”
“I know that now,” she said. “Logan’s parents were impressed by what you did yesterday. His father said you have more integrity in your little finger than Raymond has in his whole body. They want to meet you properly. As my father.”
I nodded. It was nice to hear, but it didn’t erase the hurt.
“Sabrina,” I said carefully. “I love you. And I want us to have a relationship. But it’s going to take time. You hurt me deeply. Not just with what you said, but with how you made me feel. Like nineteen years of love and sacrifice meant nothing.”
“I know,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I’ll earn back your trust. I promise. However long it takes.”
“I hope you do,” I said.
She left a little while later.
I stood by the window and watched her drive away.
The divorce would be finalized in a few months. Victoria would get a small settlement and disappear from my life. Raymond would face legal consequences.
But there was still something nagging at me.
Something about the bank transfers. Something about the timing. Something didn’t add up.
I pulled up the bank records again.
And that’s when I saw it.
The pattern I’d missed the first time.
The withdrawals hadn’t started three years ago.
May you like
They’d started six years ago.
And there was something else. Something that made my blood run cold.
