Chapter 8: The Weight of Three Weeks
I drove home alone.
Marcus had offered to come with me, but I told him I needed an hour.
He understood.
The house was quiet when I pulled into the driveway.
Clara's car was there.
The lights in the kitchen were on.
I sat in the car for a moment with the engine off.
Three weeks.
I kept coming back to that number.
Twenty-one days during which I had been in Chicago closing the biggest contract of my career, sending Clara photos of Lake Michigan at sunset, texting her that I'd bring Toby a Cubs pennant, believing — completely, without question — that my family was caring for my wife and my son.
Twenty-one days during which my father had been on calls with a disbarred attorney.
During which Natalie had been spending money traced back to my own company.
During which my mother had stood in my kitchen and told my pregnant wife to stay quiet or face the consequences.
During which Toby had learned to fall asleep on a folded blanket on a storage room floor and had drawn a picture of our family standing outside a house, because inside the house there was no room for them.
I got out of the car.
Clara was at the kitchen table when I came in.
Toby was beside her, working on something with crayons.
He looked up when he heard the door.
"Dad." He slid off the chair and crossed the kitchen at a run.
I caught him and held on.
"Hey, buddy." I kept my voice steady.
"What are you drawing?"
"Us," he said.
"But this time we're inside the house."
I set him down and looked at the drawing.
Four figures at a table.
A fifth, smaller figure — a baby, roughly circular — in what appeared to be a high chair.
"Is that your sister?" I asked.
"She doesn't have a name yet," he said seriously.
"I left a space."
Clara was watching me from across the table.
Her eyes asked the question she wasn't saying out loud.
"It's done," I said.
She exhaled — not dramatically, not with tears.
Just a long, quiet breath, like something she had been holding for three weeks finally had somewhere to go.
"The house?" she asked.
"Yours.
Already on record."
"The company?"
"Secure.
Board confirmed.
Filed."
"Your father?"
I sat down at the table.
Toby climbed back into his chair and picked up his crayon.
"Marcus is working with a detective on the holding company transfer," I said.
"The money Natalie received — it came from a joint account with both my parents' names on it.
That makes it a financial matter, not just a family one."
Clara was quiet for a moment.
"What does that mean for them?"
"It means they'll be hearing from people with more authority than me." I looked at Toby's drawing.
"My mother called.
She said she didn't know the full extent of it.
I don't know yet how much of that is true."
"Do you believe her?"
I thought about my mother's voice on the phone.
The pause before she said *I didn't stop it.*
"I believe she told herself she didn't know," I said.
"I'm not sure that's the same thing as being innocent."
Clara reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"Andrew." She waited until I looked at her.
"Toby asked me this morning if Grandma and Grandpa were coming back."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him I didn't know yet.
That some things were being figured out." She paused.
"What do I tell him?"
I looked at my son.
He was adding a sun to the corner of his drawing — large, deliberate, the way five-year-olds make suns, with lines radiating in every direction.
"Tell him," I said slowly, "that the people who come into this house from now on are people who love him."
Clara nodded.
Toby held up the drawing.
"Is it good?"
May you like
"It's perfect," I said.
He set it back down and added another ray to the sun.
