Chapter 9 - THE VERDICT OF TIME
The winter passed, and with the arrival of spring in Colorado, the final remnants of the Cole family saga were buried beneath the legal records of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
In late January, Richard Cole pled guilty to all state charges to avoid a maximum sentence. The judge sentence him to nine years in state prison, with four years suspended, meaning he would serve a full five years behind bars before being eligible for parole. Because of his attempt to flee the state, he was classified as a medium-security inmate and sent to the Augusta Correctional Center, a bleak facility far from the comfortable social circles of Richmond.
Graham Cole entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the IRS, agreeing to liquidate his remaining personal assets—including his retirement fund and his share of the catering company's remaining property—to pay off a portion of the back taxes. He took a job as a line cook at a corporate chain restaurant, working sixty hours a week under a manager who was twenty years younger than him.
Eleanor Cole’s story ended not with a bang, but with a quiet, fading whimper. With her remaining thirty thousand dollars dwindled to nothing after paying for her cosmetic procedures and moving costs, she was forced to apply for subsidized senior housing in Henrico County. The woman who had once criticized my choice of table linens now lived in a one-bedroom apartment with linoleum floors and a view of a highway bypass.
One afternoon in April, I received a small package in the mail at my Denver office. There was no return address, just a Richmond postmark.
Inside was a small, delicate ceramic peach. It was a replica of the ornaments I had used to decorate the dessert table at Lake Anna, nearly a year earlier.
There was no note inside. No apology, no explanation.
I held the ceramic fruit in my hand for a long moment, feeling its smooth, cool surface. I didn't know if it was from Madison, as a silent acknowledgment of her growth, or if it was a final, desperate token from someone else in the family trying to remind me of what had been lost.
It didn't matter.
I walked over to the large bookshelf that lined the wall of my office, right next to the framed certificates of my consulting achievements and the photographs of my travels with Nina over the past year. I placed the ceramic peach on the top shelf, right in the center, where the light from the window hit it perfectly.
May you like
It wasn't a symbol of pain anymore. It was a trophy.
A reminder of the day I decided that my value was not determined by the people who consumed my efforts. A reminder of the day I stopped being a martyr and started being the architect of my own destiny.
