Chapter 10 - The Restitution
The Charleston condo sold in April, at a modest profit given the market, and true to the settlement terms, Douglas transferred the required funds into Kayla's college account within the agreed six-month window — slightly ahead of schedule, in fact, which I chose to interpret as a genuine, if belated, attempt at doing right by his daughter rather than simply avoiding further legal consequences.
Kayla watched the account balance restore itself with a complicated expression I couldn't fully read.
"It doesn't fix everything," she said.
"No," I agreed. "It doesn't. But it's something, and something honest is better than the alternative he was offering before."
Patricia called me in May — the first time she'd reached out directly since Christmas — asking, carefully, if she might still be part of Kayla and Marcus's lives, despite everything. I thought about it for several days before agreeing, on the condition that any relationship she maintained with the children happened separately from whatever relationship she chose to maintain with her son, and that she never again position his behavior as something the family needed to quietly excuse for the sake of appearances.
"I understand," Patricia said, and something in her voice suggested she genuinely did, forty years of unconditional favoritism finally cracking open into something more honest.
Douglas, for his part, settled into a smaller apartment across town, took a lower-level position at a different company after Whitfield declined to provide references given the circumstances of his departure, and began, slowly, rebuilding visitation with Kayla on terms that felt, increasingly, less strained than I'd initially feared they might.
"He's trying," Kayla told me after one Saturday visit in June, sounding almost surprised by the observation. "It's weird. He seems different. Smaller, somehow. Not in a bad way. Just... less sure of himself than he used to be."
May you like
"People sometimes need to lose everything they built on lies before they figure out how to build something honest," I said. "I don't know if that's what's happening with your dad. But I hope it is, for your sake."
I meant it, too, though it surprised me to realize how much genuine bitterness had faded by early summer, replaced by something closer to weary, practical acceptance — not forgiveness exactly, but a willingness to stop carrying anger that no longer served any purpose beyond exhausting me.
