Chapter 9 - The Choice
Three weeks later, the rain had finally stopped, replaced by a biting, crystal-clear autumn chill.
The nursery on the third floor of our brownstone stood empty. The crib had been delivered two days before the attack; its white wooden slats were still wrapped in protective plastic. A hand-knitted blanket featuring tiny yellow ducks, sent by Clara’s late mother’s sister, lay neatly folded over the edge.
Clara stood in the doorway, leaning on a polished mahogany cane. Her physical wounds were healing—the ribs were knitting back together, the bruises on her face had faded to faint yellowish shadows—but the hollow look in her eyes was a wound that medicine could never mend.
I walked up behind her, placing my hands gently on her shoulders. She leaned her head back against my chest.
"I asked the decorator to clear it out tomorrow," I murmured softly.
"No," Clara said, her voice quiet but steady. "Leave it."
I looked at her.
"We leave it," she said, turning to face me. "Not as a shrine to what we lost, but as a reminder of what we survived. Sophia was real, Adrian. She lived for five months inside me. She heard your voice when you read to her at night. We don't hide her memory away."
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. "Whatever you want, Clara."
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out an envelope bearing the official seal of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
"Peter requested a meeting," she said. "His bail was denied. His health is failing. The prison doctor says he has six months left—advanced cardiovascular disease that accelerated after the indictments."
She held the letter out between us.
"He wants my forgiveness," she whispered, her lip trembling slightly. "He says that if I testify at his sentencing hearing about his 'diminished capacity' and his grief over his late wife, the judge might grant him compassionate home confinement for his final days."
I looked down at the paper. "The choice is yours, Clara. If you want him to die in his bed, I will withdraw the private civil injunctions. If you want him to die in a concrete cell, I will ensure the warden enforces every single regulation."
Clara looked at the envelope. She thought about the library floor. She thought about her eight brothers pinning her arms while her father stood over her, his eyes wild with greed and fury, demanding she sacrifice her child to protect his stolen fortune.
She walked over to the marble fireplace in the study.
Without a word, she struck a match, touched the flame to the corner of the letter, and dropped it into the iron grate.
We stood together in silence, watching the paper curl, blacken, and dissolve into ash.
May you like
"Let the law finish what it started," she said.
***
