Chapter 17 - The Night Before TrialSix months passed before trial.
Six months of motions.
Depositions.
Medical appointments.
Nightmares.
Security cameras outside my house.
Lily sleeping in her childhood bedroom for the first time in years.
At first, she apologized for everything.
For needing help.
For crying at breakfast.
For flinching when I dropped a pan.
For not being “better yet.”
Each time, I told her the same thing.
“You are not late to healing.”
Some days she believed me.
Some days she didn’t.
That was recovery.
Not a clean upward line.
A tide.
Forward.
Back.
Forward again.
The night before trial, she found me on the back porch. The same porch I had repaired the summer after Caroline died. The same porch Lily once painted badly because she wanted to help.
She carried two mugs of coffee.
Mine black.
Hers mostly milk.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.
She sat beside me.
“Could you?”
“No.”
We watched moths circle the porch light.
After a while, she said, “Were you really going to burn it all down?”
I knew what she meant.
The satellite phone.
Code Black.
The life I had buried.
“I was going to bring every legal force I had access to.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I looked at her.
She looked so much like her mother in the dim light that it hurt.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
She nodded.
“I’m glad Mara came.”
“So am I.”
“I’m glad you didn’t become him.”
The words landed quietly.
Hard.
“I could never become Richard.”
“No,” she said. “But rage can make people think control is protection.”
I stared into my coffee.
My daughter had survived hell and still found a way to hand me a mirror.
“You’re right.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder.
For a long time, we sat like that.
Then she said, “I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“What if they don’t believe me?”
“They will.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”
She pulled away.
“What if I freeze?”
“Then you breathe.”
“What if he looks at me?”
“Look at me.”
“What if I hate myself afterward?”
I turned fully toward her.
“Then I will sit beside you until that lie passes.”
Her eyes filled.
“I miss Mom.”
“So do I.”
“I think she’d be mad.”
“At Richard?”
“At all of us.”
I smiled sadly.
“She could be efficient with anger.”
Lily laughed once.
A real laugh.
Small, but real.
Then she reached into her robe pocket and pulled out Caroline’s letter.
“I’m reading it tomorrow before I testify.”
“Good.”
“I want to use Hale.”
“You already are.”
“No. Officially.”
My breath caught.
She looked nervous.
“I know it’s just a name.”
“It’s not.”
“I don’t want his on anything that belongs to me.”
I reached for her hand.
“Then we’ll change it.”
She nodded.
The porch settled around us.
Crickets.
Distant traffic.
Coffee steam.
A world continuing despite what had happened inside it.
Before we went in, Lily stopped at the door.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“After trial, I don’t want my life to only be this.”
“It won’t be.”
“I want a garden again.”
My throat tightened.
“Then we’ll plant one.”
She smiled.
Not healed.
Not whole.
May you like
But alive.
And that was enough for the night before war.
