Chapter 7 - THE SHATTERED PEDESTAL
The fallout was swift and merciless. Once the deposition transcripts hit the district attorney’s desk, any hope of a plea deal for a lesser charge evaporated. The state had a full confession on the record, aggravated by Briana and my father throwing each other under the bus in front of a court reporter.
Two months later, the criminal trial concluded before it even really began. Facing overwhelming evidence, Briana and my father pleaded guilty to felony forgery and grand larceny.
I didn't attend the sentencing. I felt no joy in watching them be led away in handcuffs. The anger that had burned inside me for so long had burned itself out, leaving nothing but a profound, quiet emptiness regarding my biological family. I heard the details through Marcus. My father was sentenced to three years in a minimum-security facility. Because Briana was the one who actually accepted the wired funds and initiated the fraudulent real estate transaction, she received five years.
My mother, who had managed to maintain just enough plausible deniability to avoid criminal charges, lost everything else. The bank foreclosed on their house. Without my father's income and burdened by the crushing civil restitution they owed Penny, she was forced to move into a tiny, run-down apartment complex on the outskirts of the city, completely ostracized by the wealthy social circles she had spent her life cultivating.
The pedestal the golden child had stood on was shattered into a million unrecognizable pieces.
One chilly afternoon in late November, I was in the estate's library, organizing some of my grandfather’s old leather-bound books. The room smelled of old paper, cedarwood, and the crackling fire I had built in the hearth. It was incredibly peaceful.
My phone buzzed on the desk. It was an unknown number. I let it go to voicemail, assuming it was a spam call. But a minute later, a notification popped up. I tapped the icon and put the phone on speaker.
"Sabrina..." It was my mother's voice, sounding fragile, old, and incredibly small. "It's Mom. I... I don't know if you'll listen to this. I just... I went to see your father today. In the facility. And Briana... she won't even speak to me on the phone. She blames me for all of it."
There was a long pause, filled only with the sound of her ragged breathing.
"I'm sitting in this awful little apartment, and I'm looking at old photo albums. I found a picture of you and Granddad in the garden. You looked so happy. I realized... I never took a picture of you like that. I spent my whole life making sure Briana had the sun, I never noticed I was leaving you in the dark. And now I'm in the dark too. I'm sorry, Sabrina. I know it's too late, and I know you'll never forgive me. But I'm sorry."
The line clicked and went dead.
I sat in the leather armchair, staring at the phone. For the first time in this entire ordeal, a single tear escaped my eye, tracing a hot path down my cheek. It wasn't a tear of regret, or even necessarily of sadness. It was a tear of mourning for the family I should have had, the mother she could have been if she hadn't been poisoned by favoritism and greed.
But an apology born of rock bottom doesn't erase decades of neglect, nor does it undo the felony they committed trying to ruin me. I didn't delete the voicemail, but I didn't return the call either. I set the phone face down on the desk, stood up, and walked over to the window.
May you like
The estate grounds were beautiful in the winter. The bare trees stood tall and resilient against the cold wind. They had shed their dead leaves, preparing to survive the winter so they could bloom again in the spring. I felt a sudden kinship with those trees.
I had shed my dead weight. The storm had passed, and my roots were stronger than ever.
