Chapter 7
The police spoke with Darius after he came to our house.
Dad told me they made clear he should not contact me or arrive without permission. Our lawyer handled his messages from then on.
I stopped jumping every time a car slowed outside.
Not immediately.
A little at a time.
Mom began meeting with a counselor too. Aunt Paula told Dad she was also working with a financial adviser to understand the debts she had hidden.
I learned there had been credit cards Dad didn’t know about.
Some expenses were hers. Some were Darius’s.
Every time Dad discovered another number, I worried he would stop believing anything Mom said forever.
Maybe he worried about that too.
One evening, I found him sitting at the kitchen table with no papers in front of him.
That was unusual.
“Are you done?”
“For tonight.”
“Are you sad?”
“Yes.”
“Because of Mom?”
“Yes.”
I sat beside him.
“Can I still miss her?”
He looked at me immediately.
“Of course.”
“Even when I’m mad?”
“Yes.”
“Will that make you sadder?”
He reached for my hand.
“You don’t need to choose which parent to love. My feelings are mine to take care of.”
I breathed easier.
Then I asked whether he still loved Mom.
He thought before answering.
“I care about her. I’m also deciding what I need to be safe and able to trust in a marriage.”
I didn’t understand all of it.
I understood he wasn’t asking me to decide.
The investigation took months.
During that time, Dad arranged shorter routes and hired someone to help with school pickup when Renee couldn’t. Maya called on Wednesdays and Sundays. Mom saw me regularly, with Aunt Paula nearby at first.
Our life had more schedules.
It also had fewer surprises.
The financial company returned the nine thousand dollars that had been frozen. Other money was recovered from an account investigators connected to Darius.
Dad showed me the statement after explaining it.
The balance still wasn’t what Grandpa had left.
But it was growing back.
“Can I put my savings in?” I asked.
“You may save for your own goals. You are not filling the hole someone else made.”
“What if I want to?”
“We can make a separate savings account for you. Your college fund is being handled by the adults responsible.”
I agreed.
Dad took me to the bank on Saturday.
I signed my own name on the youth account paperwork.
He stood beside me and explained every page before I signed.
That mattered more than I knew how to say.
Mom asked whether she could join us for my school science presentation.
I said yes.
Dad and Mom sat on opposite sides of the aisle. Neither argued. Both listened while I explained how my model cleaned dirty water through different layers.
Afterward, Mom told me I had spoken clearly.
Dad said my experiment was better organized than his truck paperwork.
I laughed.
For ten minutes, I felt like a normal kid showing his parents something he made.
Then Mom said she needed to speak to me privately.
My stomach tightened.
She noticed.
“It isn’t bad news about you,” she said.
We sat on a bench outside.
“My attorney has explained what I need to do,” she told me. “I’m accepting responsibility for the false documents.”
“Will you go to jail?”
“I don’t know the final decision yet.”
I looked down at my shoes.
They were my old ones.
She looked too.
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not thinking about the sneakers.”
“I know.”
“Are you telling the truth to everybody now?”
“Yes.”
“Even when it gets you in trouble?”
She swallowed.
“Yes.”
I studied her face.
I wanted to trust her.
I was scared of wanting that.
She reached toward me, then stopped.
“Can I hug you?”
I nodded.
She held me gently.
Not like she wanted to hide me from the consequences.
Like she understood I had been living with them already.
A week later, Dad told me Darius had been charged over the financial scheme and the money taken from several people.
Mom’s case concerned the false authorization and what she had done with my education funds.
Maya called that evening.
“I’m proud of you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For staying honest.”
“I didn’t really do anything.”
“You asked a question people wanted you to stop asking.”
I looked at the notebook she gave me.
On its first page, I had written only five words.
I wanted Mom to answer.
May you like
I finally wrote something beneath them.
Now she has to.
