“No.”
“But it’s known that there were conflicts between them.”
“There were conflicts. But my mother started them, not my wife. Ellie always tried to mend things. It was my mother who pushed her away.”
“Witness!”
“And another thing,” Mike raised his voice. “My wife would not lie. She is the most honest person I know. If she wanted to hurt my mother, she would have found an easier way. She wouldn’t have needed to forge documents, because the crimes were real.”
Susan jumped to her feet.
“Mike! How could you? I’m your mother!”
“She’s brainwashed you!”
“Defendant, sit down!” The judge banged her gavel. “Bailiff!”
The guards sat her mother-in-law back down. She was crying, or pretending to cry. Mike looked at her without pity.
“Are you finished with your questions?” he asked.
“Yes,” the judge nodded. “The witness is excused.”
On the final day of the trial, the defendant was given the floor. Susan stood up. She looked so small in that huge courtroom. Pathetic, crushed.
“Your Honor, esteemed court,” she began in a trembling voice. “I ask you to understand. Everything I did, I did for my son, for his future.”
Ellie closed her eyes. She knew what was coming.
“I raised him alone. Without a husband, without help. I worked day and night so he would have everything he needed. And when the opportunity arose to provide him with real wealth…”
“Defendant,” the judge interrupted, “are you admitting to the fact of the thefts?”
“I…” Susan hesitated. “I took money. Yes. But not for myself. For my son.”
“You bought a house in Costa Rica for your son?”
“It was an investment, an investment in the future.”
“And hiring a man to compromise your daughter-in-law—was that also an investment?”
Her mother-in-law turned pale.
“That… that was necessary. That woman was destroying my family. Turning my son against me.”
“So you admit to hiring Mr. Samuels?”
A pause. Long, agonizing.
“Yes…” Susan finally breathed out. “Yes, I admit it. But please understand, I wanted to protect my son from an unsuitable woman.”
“That’s enough,” the judge said. “The court will now recess to deliberate on the verdict.”
The verdict was announced three hours later. Ellie and Mike waited in the hallway. He was smoking, even though he had quit five years ago. She sat on a hard bench, staring at a single point on the wall.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “Probably not.”
“It’ll be over soon.”
“Yes. And something else will begin.”
The courtroom door opened. The court was returning. They went inside and took their seats. Susan was led in again by the bailiffs.
“In the name of the state…” the judge began. “The court has found…”
Ellie listened as the verdict was read.
“…guilty on all counts. The court sentences the defendant to a term of eight years in a state correctional facility. The defendant is ordered to pay restitution to Summit Construction in the amount of four million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. All assets acquired through criminal means, including the property in Costa Rica, are to be forfeited.”
A murmur rippled through the courtroom. Eight years was a significant sentence. Journalists’ cameras flashed, and someone was already dictating the first lines of their story into a phone. Ellie felt a strange emptiness. She had waited so long for this moment, this moment of justice. And now that it had come, she felt nothing. No joy, no relief. Only exhaustion.
Mike sat motionless, his face a stone mask, but Ellie could see a muscle twitching in his jaw. Eight years. His mother would spend eight years in prison.
Susan swayed. The bailiffs caught her by the arms.
“Mikey!” she cried out. “Mikey, help me!”
Mike didn’t move. He sat still, staring straight ahead.
“The verdict may be appealed within ten days,” the judge concluded. “This court is adjourned.”
They walked out of the courthouse into a swarm of reporters.
“Mr. Miller, how do you feel?”
“Eleanor, are you satisfied with the verdict?”
“Will you maintain contact with your mother?”
Mike silently pushed past the microphones, took Ellie’s hand, and led her to the car. They got in, and he started the engine. Kate caught up with them at the parking garage exit.
“Ellie!” she tapped on the window. “Are you guys okay?”
Ellie rolled down the window.
“I think so.”
“Call me tonight, okay? I’ll be worried.”
“I’ll call.”
Kate stepped back, and they drove off. The city outside the window seemed strangely unreal. The same streets, the same buildings, but everything looked different. As if they were looking at it from inside a fishbowl. They drove in silence for a while.
“Eight years,” he finally said.
“Yes.”
“She’ll be sixty-four when she gets out.”
“Mike, I don’t feel sorry for her.”
“I’m trying not to, and I can’t.” He stared at the road.
“That must be awful.”
“It’s not awful. It’s normal. She’s my mother. I’m supposed to feel something.”
“You do feel something. Just not what you’re ‘supposed’ to feel by conventional standards. And that’s okay.”
He pulled the car over to the side of the road. He rested his head on the steering wheel.
“I’m so tired, Ellie.”
She rubbed his back.
“I know. But it’s over now. We can start again.”
“Start again…” He lifted his head and looked at her. “Do you really want to start again? After all this?”
“I want to start with you. Nothing else matters.”
He pulled her close and held her tight.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
They sat like that for a long time, holding each other in the car on the side of the road. Other cars drove by, people hurried somewhere, but they were just together. And that was all they needed.
A year passed. A lot had changed in that time. Summit Construction had recovered from the scandal, thanks in large part to Ellie, who had put the company’s finances back in order. Mr. Henderson appointed her Chief Financial Officer. “You’ve earned this,” he said at the announcement. “Without you, the company might not have survived this crisis.”
Mike also got a promotion, becoming the head of the engineering department. The colleagues who had once shunned him now respected him. He had proven that he had nothing to do with his mother’s crimes. He proved it with his actions, not his words. Their relationship became stronger than ever. What they had been through had tempered their marriage. Minor quarrels and misunderstandings now seemed insignificant compared to what they had endured.
“You know,” Ellie said one evening, “I sometimes wonder, what if I hadn’t found those documents?”
“Don’t think about it.”
“No, seriously. We would have kept living in that lie. You wouldn’t have known the truth about your mother, she would have kept stealing. And eventually, she would have been caught anyway. Only it would have been too late.”
“Too late for what?” Mike turned to her.
“For us.”
“If you hadn’t exposed her, I never would have realized how blind I was. I wouldn’t have understood how she manipulated me. I would have kept putting her between us.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes. What happened was terrible. But it opened my eyes, forced me to grow up, to become the husband you deserve.”
Ellie smiled.
“You were always a good husband.”
“No. I was a mama’s boy who couldn’t tell the difference between love and manipulation. It’s different now.” He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “Thank you. For everything.”
Two months later, Ellie found out she was pregnant. She sat in the bathroom, staring at the two lines on the test, and couldn’t believe it. She had waited so long for this moment, and now it was here. She and Mike had dreamed of having children long before this whole story, before the revelations, before the trial, before their lives turned into a nightmare. But it hadn’t been the right time. First, they needed to get on their feet, settle in, save money. And then her mother-in-law came along with her schemes, and thoughts of children took a back seat. What kind of children could you have when you didn’t know if your marriage would survive?
Now, all of that was behind them, and the two lines on the test felt like a sign. Life goes on.
“Mike!” she called out.
He ran in a second later.
“What happened?”
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