“Thank you, Ms. Kesler,” the judge said softly. “The record will reflect your statement.”
Graham was dragged away.
He didn’t look at me this time. He didn’t look at Belle.
He looked at the floor.
A man who had traded his soul for a fortune he would never spend.
The judge adjourned the session.
The press swarmed toward the front, but security blocked them.
I walked over to Evelyn.
She was putting her glove back on.
“You came back,” I said.
“I never left,” she said, touching my cheek. “I just moved to the shadows to watch your back.”
“But now we are walking in the sun.”
We walked out of the courthouse together.
The heavy doors swung open, and the blinding light of the afternoon hit us.
I paused on the steps.
Across the street, I could see the steeple of the chapel where this had all begun.
I remembered standing there in the rain, clutching a wreath, feeling the humiliation of being dragged away.
I remembered the sound of the doors locking me out.
I had felt like an orphan.
Then I had felt like I had lost my mother twice—once to death and once to the lies of her family.
But as I looked at the chapel now, I realized something.
They hadn’t locked me out.
They had locked themselves in.
They had locked themselves in a cage of lies and forgery and murder. They thought the walls would protect them. They thought the heavy oak doors would keep the truth at bay.
But they forgot that I had the key.
My mother gave me the key.
It wasn’t made of metal.
It was made of numbers.
It was made of the Harbor Ledger.
I took a deep breath of the fresh air.
I wasn’t the estranged daughter anymore.
I was the administrator.
I was the auditor.
And the account was finally balanced.
“Let’s go home, Kinsley,” Evelyn said.
“Yes,” I said, turning away from the chapel. “Let’s go home.”
The truth had opened the door, and for the first time in a long time, I walked through it.
Not as a victim, but as the woman my mother knew I could be.
