Chapter 27
I put an arm around her shoulders.
“You don't have to decide today.”
She rested her head against me.
And for the first time,
I realized how many relationships
Ranata's lies had damaged
beyond my parents and me.
The money could be counted.
The missed birthdays,
graduations,
visits,
and ordinary conversations
could not.
Over the following months,
Desmond cooperated with the investigation.
He provided documents
from the business accounts
and explained the transactions
he could personally verify.
He also began separating
his finances from Ranata's
under the guidance of his own attorney.
Their marriage had been troubled
long before the fraud was discovered.
Now it was breaking apart.
One afternoon,
he called to tell me
he had moved into a rented apartment.
“I should have asked more questions,”
he said.
“I believed what was convenient.”
I didn't disagree.
He continued.
“I liked thinking
we were doing well.
I didn't want to know
how much of it was borrowed.”
I thought about my parents.
About myself.
About how differently
each of us had been affected
by the same invented story.
“At least you're asking questions now,”
I said.
He was quiet.
Then he replied,
“I wish I'd started sooner.”
He never asked me
to speak badly about Ranata
to their daughter.
I respected him for that.
And when he eventually filed for divorce,
I didn't celebrate.
A marriage was ending.
A family had been damaged.
There was nothing joyful
about those consequences.
Justice, I was learning,
didn't always feel like victory.
Sometimes it felt like
watching a long-ignored wound
finally being cleaned.
Necessary.
Painful.
And impossible to rush.
Meanwhile,
my ninety days at the farmhouse
were coming to an end.
The developer had been reasonable
about my move.
The contract gave me time
to remove personal belongings,
sell equipment I no longer needed,
and arrange the next chapter of my life.
I had already decided
not to buy another large farm.
Not immediately.
Fifteen years of managing eighty acres
had taught me more
than any classroom could.
But I wanted to discover
who I might become
without waking every morning
responsible for an entire property.
I purchased a smaller house
about twenty minutes away.
It sat near the river
on a quiet piece of land
with enough space for a garden,
a small workshop,
and a line of fruit trees.
The house wasn't extravagant.
There were no marble staircases.
No gates.