Chapter 10: What Comes After
The charges were filed on a Thursday.
Victor Pryce was named first.
Fraud, document falsification, and witness intimidation for the text he had sent me at the lake house.
His disbarment made the second charge easier to prove — he had held himself out as a practicing attorney to Ethan and Barbara, and that alone carried its own weight.
Raymond Cassel was charged separately.
His cooperation meant a reduced count, but his statement was the keystone of the whole case.
He described the meeting in detail — who was present, what was said, how much he was paid, and where the money went.
He cried during parts of it, Dennis told me later.
His daughter had sat beside him and held his hand.
Ethan was charged with one count of fraud for his role in executing the forged contract.
His attorney argued he had been misled by Pryce.
The judge would decide how much of that argument held.
Barbara was not charged.
There was not enough direct evidence to connect her to the forgery itself, only to the obstruction attempt she had made on my porch.
Sandra filed that separately.
It was still working its way through.
I was in Sandra's office when she walked me through all of it.
Gerald was there too, sitting in the chair beside me.
"Your father's estate is fully restored," Sandra said.
"The fraudulent transfer has been voided.
Every asset he intended to leave you is legally yours.
The lake house, the savings account, the investments.
All of it."
I nodded.
"And the divorce?" I said.
"Ethan's petition is still active," she said.
"But given the fraud conviction — if it holds — his claim to any marital assets becomes significantly weaker.
My recommendation is to let the criminal case settle first, then proceed."
"All right," I said.
Gerald leaned forward.
"There's one more thing.
Dennis Farrow has been in contact with the three other families.
Two of them want to pursue civil claims against Pryce.
They're asking if you'd be willing to be part of a coordinated action."
I looked at him.
"You don't have to decide now," he said.
"I know," I said.
"But yes.
Tell them yes."
Sandra made a note.
Gerald sat back.
Outside the window, the city was going about its morning.
People on the pavement, a bus pulling away from the curb, a woman walking a dog that kept stopping to investigate something in the grass.
"My father would have hated all of this," I said.
"The lawyers, the court filings, the whole machinery of it."
"He would have hated that it was necessary," Gerald said.
"That's different."
"Yes," I said.
"That's different."
I picked up my bag and stood.
"Sandra," I said.
"Thank you.
For everything."
She shook my hand.
"Your father built something worth protecting.
I'm glad we got to protect it."
I walked out into the corridor.
Gerald fell into step beside me.
"What will you do now?" he said.
"After all of this settles."
I thought about it.
"I'm going to fix the porch railing," I said.
"The patch my father did — it's starting to lift.
I want to do it properly.
The way he would have."
Gerald smiled.
"Do you know how?"
"No," I said.
"But I'll figure it out."
We walked out into the morning together.
Three months later, Pryce was convicted on all counts.
His sentencing was set for the following spring.
Cassel received a suspended sentence in recognition of his cooperation.
Ethan pleaded guilty to the single fraud count and was ordered to pay restitution and complete two years of supervised probation.
He called me once after the sentencing.
I let it go to voicemail.
He said he was sorry.
He said he knew it was too late for that to mean anything.
He said he hoped, someday, I might believe him.
I listened to the message once.
Then I deleted it.
Not out of anger.
Out of completion.
There was nothing left in that direction that belonged to me.
The civil action with the other families was filed in the spring.
Dennis Farrow testified.
Gerald testified.
I testified.
The process was long and careful and sometimes exhausting, and at the end of it, two of the three families recovered a significant portion of what had been taken from them.
The third family's case was still ongoing when I last heard.
It wasn't everything.
It was never going to be everything.
But it was something.
On a Saturday in June I got up before six.
I made coffee.
I took it out to the dock and sat at the end with my feet hanging over the water.
The lake was flat and silver in the early light.
A fish broke the surface somewhere near the far bank and was gone.
I sat there for a long time.
I didn't fish.
I never learned to fish properly, and there was no one to show me now.
But I sat where my father used to sit, and I drank my coffee, and I watched the light move across the water the way I had watched it my whole childhood.
At some point I stopped thinking about the case, about Ethan, about Barbara, about any of it.
I just watched the lake.
And when the coffee was gone I went inside, left the cup in the sink, and started on the porch railing.
It took me most of the morning.
I made mistakes.
I fixed them.
By noon the patch was solid and the wood was the right color and if you didn't know where to look, you couldn't tell it had ever needed repair.
I pressed my hand flat against it.
It held.
---
Some things are taken from us quietly, over years, by people we trusted.
And some things — the things our fathers built, the things they protected for us in the dark — hold on until we're ready to find them.
Have you ever had to fight for something that was already yours?
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