Part 10
The next afternoon, Anna came home from school with a big sketchpad tucked under her arm. She looked relaxed, her shoulders no longer hunched under the weight of her family's subtle cruelty.
I was sitting at the dining room table, drinking tea.
"Hey, Mom," she said, dropping her backpack by the door. "Can I show you something?"
"Of course, sweetie."
She walked over and opened the sketchpad. It was a beautiful, detailed charcoal drawing of an old, grand library, with massive windows letting in streams of light. In the center of the room, a young girl was standing, looking up at the endless shelves with a look of pure wonder.
"It's beautiful, Anna," I said, genuinely moved.
"It's where I want to go," she whispered, looking at me. "I want to study classical illustration and architecture. I know Aunt Sabrina said it's stupid, but... I really want to try."
I pulled her into a tight embrace, burying my face in her hair. "It's not stupid at all. It's magnificent. And you are going to go to the best school in the country for it."
"Are you sure we can afford it? After what Grandma and Grandpa did?"
I pulled back and smiled at her, tapping her nose. "I checked the account this morning. The money is exactly where it belongs. Every single penny. No one can ever touch it again."
Her eyes went wide. "How did you get it back? Did you yell at them?"
"No," I smiled, thinking of the empty warehouse, the cancelled contracts, and Sabrina's repossessed Mercedes. "Your dad and I just had a very quiet, professional conversation with them about logistics."
She giggled, not needing to know the grim details of the destruction. She just needed to know she was safe, protected, and fiercely loved.
Later that evening, Owen came home holding a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers. He walked into the kitchen and gave me a long, lingering kiss.
"I just drove past the R&J Logistics warehouse," he murmured, pouring two glasses of wine. "There were three liquidation trucks outside. Your father is selling off the office furniture and the older delivery vans just to pay the severance for the drivers he had to lay off today."
"Good," I said, taking a sip of wine. "They can use the exercise."
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"Sabrina's husband apparently packed his bags too," Owen added, shaking his head. "When he found out she took a massive loss on her car and emptied their joint savings to cover up a family fraud scheme, he filed for legal separation. She's moving back into your parents' basement."
I raised my glass. "To family traditions."
