Chapter 6
Carla and I, strangely, became something closer to friends. We had survived the same betrayal from two different cities, built around two different versions of the same man, and there was a peculiar, specific understanding between us that neither of us could fully access with anyone else who hadn't lived through it. She visited Denver eight months after the case resolved. We had dinner. We did not talk about Lucas for most of it, which felt, by the end of the evening, like its own kind of victory.
I sold the Denver house eleven months after that day at the airport. I did not want to keep living in the rooms where I had said "I love you too" and meant the opposite of every syllable. I moved into a smaller place downtown, started over professionally — I had put my own career on hold for years to support what I believed was Lucas's, and I am, slowly, rebuilding what that might look like for me alone.
I think about that afternoon in my study often — my finger hovering over the mouse, seconds from transferring everything into an account Lucas could never have touched, certain in that moment that taking the money was the only justice available to me.
I am glad, now, that the message arrived before I clicked it.
May you like
What I got instead of seven hundred twenty thousand dollars taken quietly and alone was the full truth, recovered legally, with federal weight behind it, alongside two other women who had been hurt by the same man and who I would never have known existed if I had simply taken my money and walked away into my own private resolution.
It took longer. It was harder. It is, I believe, considerably more complete.
