«I haven’t liked you since our first night!»…

One that would begin simply, Chloe, here’s what your father did. And here’s how he rose from it. The weeks that followed were anything but peaceful.

The media storm didn’t calm, it evolved. Daniel’s face was everywhere, now framed in courtroom sketches and news tickers that read Former CFO Indicted. Ashley vanished from the public eye.

Rumors swirled of her resignation, of a plea deal, of panic. Lillian quietly stepped down from every board she held a seat on, citing personal reasons. I never heard from her again.

I didn’t need to. Some endings don’t require confrontation. Just exposure.

But closure, true closure, isn’t the absence of noise. It’s what you hear when the noise fades. Eventually I found us a new place downtown, a quiet apartment with wide windows and no ghosts.

For me, it was the sound of Chloe’s laughter echoing through our new apartment. It was the silence between emails from the board. Not tension, but trust.

It was the first time I stood in the Langford executive office, looked out the windows my father once did, and didn’t feel like an imposter. One rainy afternoon, Miles dropped by unannounced, holding a white envelope. Last piece of the puzzle, he said.

It’s from a source inside the DA’s office. They wanted you to have it. Inside was a copy of Daniel’s plea statement, not for public release.

Just one line stood out. I thought I could outsmart her. I never thought she’d fight back.

I folded it, slid it into the back of my journal. That’s all it was now. A footnote in the story of a man who underestimated the wrong woman.

There would be court hearings, depositions, years of cleanup. But emotionally, spiritually, I was already done. I spent a Saturday morning helping Chloe paint a mural on the wall of her bedroom.

Foxes and forests and stars. She asked if she could invite Grandma to see it. Of course, I said.

My mother had grown quieter lately. Less critical, more present. Maybe she saw now what she hadn’t seen then.

Or maybe losing the illusion of Daniel had finally opened her eyes. Either way, the past didn’t hold as much weight as it once did. A few days later, I returned to the conservatory…