Chapter 11: The Bracelet on the Table
Six months later, Grant Blake was formally charged with forgery, wire fraud, and tax evasion.
His attorney issued a statement.
His firm issued a separate one.
Megan read neither of them.
She heard about the charges from Carol, who called on a Wednesday afternoon while Megan was in the backyard with Caitlin, the two of them planting the spring bulbs they'd bought at the nursery the weekend before.
"It's done," Carol said.
"He's been charged.
His arraignment is next week."
"Thank you," Megan said.
"How are you feeling?"
Megan looked at Caitlin, kneeling in the dirt, carefully pressing a bulb into the ground with both hands the way Megan had shown her.
"Okay," she said.
"Actually okay."
She hung up and went back to kneeling beside her daughter.
"Who was that?" Caitlin asked.
"Carol."
Caitlin sat back on her heels.
She was fifteen now.
She'd grown two inches since October and cut her hair shorter and joined the school debate team, which Megan suspected was not unrelated to the year she'd had.
"Is it over?" Caitlin asked.
"The legal part is starting.
But the part that was hurting us — yes.
That part is over."
Caitlin nodded.
She pressed another bulb into the ground.
"Mom."
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you didn't just let him have it."
Megan looked at her.
"The money?"
"All of it.
The house.
The account.
Grandma's bracelet." Caitlin smoothed the dirt flat with her palm.
"I'm glad you went after it."
Megan didn't answer right away.
She pressed a bulb into the ground beside her daughter's.
"Your grandmother used to say something," she said.
"When I was about your age.
She said — the things that belong to you, you have to be willing to go get them.
Nobody hands them back."
Caitlin was quiet for a moment.
"She was right," she said.
That evening, Megan set the bracelet on the kitchen table while she made dinner.
Not locked away.
Just there, in the light, the way it used to be on her mother's wrist on ordinary evenings — present, familiar, belonging exactly where it was.
Caitlin came in, saw it, and didn't say anything.
She just sat down at the table and started on her homework, the bracelet glinting quietly between them, and the kitchen filled with the smell of something warm, and outside the window the last of the afternoon light moved slowly across the yard where the bulbs were waiting underground, patient and certain, for spring.
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Some things were never meant to be taken.
And the people who take them are counting on you to stay quiet.
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