Chapter 16 — Home

Two weeks later the afternoon sun came down warm and gold over the little backyard of my house on the edge of the city, and there was a picnic table under the big oak, and my daughter was at it painting watercolors with her mother, and I stood at the back door with a tray of lemonade and let myself, for a moment, just watch them.

Julian was in the county jail, held without bail, facing a stack of charges long enough to end his life as a free man — the fraud, the grand larceny, the looting of the trust, and the far worse things he’d done when Elena caught him.

The forensic accountants had traced every dollar; the ledgers he’d tried to sink in a swimming pool had come up out of that green water intact and had told the whole story in his own handwriting.

His seized assets and the recovered trust would go back where they belonged, and would more than cover the cost of putting Elena and Maya back together.

Elena’s bruises had faded.