Chapter 22 - An Unwanted Visitor
The news of our engagement was kept quiet, shared only with a few close colleagues and my father, who warmly congratulated us from his retirement home in Florida. We didn't want a grand affair; we planned a simple backyard ceremony under the shade of our apple tree, surrounded by the people who truly mattered.
But peace, I had learned, is a garden that requires constant weeding.
It was a Thursday afternoon, a week after Owen’s proposal. Clara was at a friend's house for a playdate, and Leo was napping upstairs. I was in the front yard, trimming the hydrangea bushes that lined our walkway, when a yellow cab pulled up to the curb.
The door opened, and a woman stepped out.
She was thin, almost gaunt, wearing a simple beige trench coat that looked far too warm for the summer heat. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight, neat bun, and she wore oversized sunglasses that covered half her face. Even before she took them off, a cold dread began to pool in my stomach.
It was Regina Harrison. Damon’s mother.
I hadn't seen her since the divorce trial, where she had sat on his side of the courtroom, glaring at me as if I were the one who had destroyed her son's life.
"Nora," she said, her voice stiff and formal as she stopped at the edge of my property line. She didn't step onto the walkway, respecting the invisible boundary.
"Regina," I said, my grip tightening on the gardening shears. "What are you doing here?"
"I know I’m the last person you want to see," she began, her chin trembling slightly. The haughty, aristocratic air she had once carried was gone, replaced by the fragile exhaustion of a mother whose only child was behind bars. "But I had to come. Damon... Damon asked me to deliver something to you."
"I have a restraining order against your son, Regina. And he is in a federal penitentiary."
"He didn't write to you," she said quickly, reaching into her leather handbag and pulling out a legal document. "It's for Clara. He signed the final trust release. The money he had hidden—the funds the feds didn't seize because they were under my name—he has legally transferred all of it into an educational trust for Clara. He wanted me to give you the execution papers."
She held out the envelope. I didn't reach for it.
"I don't want his money, Regina. Clara doesn't need it."
"It's over three hundred thousand dollars, Nora," Regina pleaded, her eyes filling with tears. "It’s the last of his personal estate. He wanted to make amends. He knows he will never see her again. He knows he is dead to her. Please... let him do this one good thing."
I looked at the envelope, then at the older woman who had once enabled her son’s arrogance. The money was clean now—the legal team had vetted it, and the feds had cleared it. It was a drop of water in the desert of his sins, but it was a drop nonetheless.
May you like
"Leave it on the mailbox," I said coldly. "And do not come back here, Regina."
She nodded, her shoulders slumping. She placed the envelope on the black metal mailbox, turned, and got back into the waiting cab. As the car pulled away, I stood in the sunlight, realizing that even from a prison cell, Damon was still trying to buy a piece of his conscience.
