Chapter 11: What Comes After
The civil case was filed on a Tuesday.
I know because William called me that morning, early, before I'd had coffee, and said Patricia had submitted the paperwork and it would be public record by noon.
I thanked him and stood in my kitchen in yesterday's socks and looked out the window at the street below.
A woman was walking a dog that was clearly walking her.
A man was unlocking a shop front, his breath visible in the cold.
Ordinary things.
I made coffee.
Poured one cup.
Stood at the window and drank it.
Three weeks later, Victoria's attorneys made their first settlement offer.
Patricia called it insultingly low and said so in those words, which I appreciated.
William and I declined it in a joint letter that Patricia drafted and we both signed.
Victoria's attorneys came back with a second offer two weeks after that.
Higher.
Still not sufficient, Patricia said, and still — more importantly — entirely private.
"She wants this quiet," Patricia told us.
"She wants a number that makes it go away."
"We told her what we wanted," I said.
"A public record."
"She won't agree to that willingly."
"Then we go to trial."
Patricia looked at William.
William looked at me.
"Trial," he said.
We never made it to trial.
The district attorney's office filed crjminal charges on a Thursday — document forgery, fraud, and one additional charge that Patricia had not predicted: obstruction, related to the payment made to Carol to relocate and stay silent.
Victoria's attorneys called Patricia within the hour.
By Friday afternoon, they had agreed to a civil settlement that included a full public statement of facts, signed by Victoria, acknowledging what she had done.
I read the statement in Patricia's conference room, at the same long table where this had all begun to come apart.
*I, Victoria Ashworth, acknowledge that in the year of Eleanor Marsh's birth, I intercepted correspondence between William Holt and Diane Marsh, commissioned a fraudulent letter intended to deceive Ms.
Marsh into believing Mr.
Holt had ended their relationship, and subsequently entered into a financial agreement with Ms.
Marsh contingent on her permanent relocation and silence.
I acknowledge that these actions caused direct and lasting harm to William Holt, Diane Marsh, and Eleanor Marsh, and that I took deliberate steps to conceal these actions for a period of twenty-three years.*
Seven sentences.
Twenty-three years.
My mother's name in a signed legal document, finally on the right side of the truth.
I set the statement down.
William was watching me from across the table.
"Is it enough?" he said.
I thought about my mother signing a different document in a different room, twenty-three years ago.
Alone.
Afraid.
Believing a lie.
"It's enough for now," I said.
"The crjminal case is still open."
"Yes."
"Then it's enough for now."
Patricia gathered the papers.
James refilled the water glasses.
Outside the window, the city was doing what it always did — moving, indifferent, ongoing.
Victoria pled guilty to the forgery charge six weeks later.
Her attorneys negotiated a suspended sentence and a substantial fine.
She did not go to prison.
I won't pretend that didn't sting.
But her name was in the public record.
The statement of facts was filed.
Anyone who searched would find it.
She called William once more, the night before the plea.
He told me about it afterward, over dinner at a restaurant he'd chosen because it was quiet and had good bread, which I was already learning was his primary criterion for restaurants.
"She said she was sorry," he told me.
"What did you say?"
"I said I believed her." He broke a piece of bread.
"I also said it didn't change anything."
"Does it?
Change anything?"
He considered this seriously, the way I was learning he considered most things.
"It changes what I think of her, slightly.
It doesn't change what she did.
Those are different questions."
I thought about that.
"My mother forgave people too easily," I said.
"I used to think it was a flaw."
"And now?"
"Now I think it was just how she survived." I picked up my glass.
"I don't know yet what works for me."
"You have time," he said.
"You have quite a lot of time."
We ate dinner.
We talked about other things — small things, the kind of things you talk about when you are two people still learning the shape of each other.
He told me about a trip he'd taken years ago that had gone spectacularly wrong.
I told him about my terrible sense of direction, and he laughed — a real laugh, surprised out of him — and said my mother had been exactly the same.
May you like
I liked hearing that.
I liked it more than I'd expected.
