Chapter 5 - Reclaiming the Castle
Three days later, the sun was shining brightly over our neighborhood.
The police tape was gone from our property. The mess from the hijacked party had been completely cleared away. I had hired a professional cleaning crew to scrub the house from top to bottom, demanding they sanitize the kitchen until it smelled like lemon and bleach, erasing every trace of my mother's presence.
I pulled my SUV into the driveway, turned off the engine, and looked in the rearview mirror.
Frederick was fast asleep in his car seat, his cheeks a healthy, normal pink. The infection had cleared up beautifully. Beside me in the passenger seat, Amy was wearing the blue dress I had bought her. The shadows under her eyes were fading. The fear that had gripped her posture for a year was gone.
"Ready to go home?" I asked softly.
She looked at the house. "Is it really ours again?"
"It’s always been ours," I promised her. "But now, it’s safe."
We walked through the front door. The house was quiet, peaceful, and immaculate. But I had one more surprise.
I led Amy into the backyard.
The expensive rented tables and liquor bottles from my mother's disastrous gathering were gone. In their place was a single, beautiful wooden picnic table set under the shade of our large oak tree. Colorful balloons were tied to the fence. A banner reading Happy 1st Birthday Frederick fluttered in the breeze.
Standing around the table were not the leeches of my extended family, but Amy’s parents, who had flown in from Chicago the moment I called them, along with our closest friends and neighbors.
Amy gasped, her hands flying to her mouth as tears of genuine joy filled her eyes. Her mother ran forward, wrapping her in a fierce, protective hug, sobbing into her shoulder.
As we celebrated my son's real birthday, eating the custom cake I had managed to save in the fridge, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
It was an email from my lawyer.
The preliminary hearings had been set. Teresa was being held without bail due to the flight risk associated with the offshore accounts we had frozen. Mason was facing a minimum of five years in state prison. As for the aunts and uncles who had sat in my backyard eating lobster while my wife suffered? My lawyer had drafted civil lawsuits against every single one of them for receipt of stolen property, as we proved Teresa had been funding their "gifts" with my stolen money.
I locked my phone and slid it back into my pocket.
May you like
I looked across the yard. Amy was laughing—a real, bright, beautiful laugh—as Frederick smeared chocolate frosting all over his face. The nightmare was over. The leeches had been salted. The castle was reclaimed.
And for the first time in a long time, the Bradley house finally felt like a home.
