Chapter 12 - The Plea
David did not become honest.
He became cornered.
The six million dollars were leverage for a plea deal.
Still, the money mattered.
It could repay families.
Protect employees.
Restore stolen charitable funds.
I gave the account numbers to investigators without writing David back.
One account held something else.
Money from my father’s estate.
Mine.
David had moved it years earlier through trust amendments I signed without understanding.
Two-point-four million dollars.
Thomas said, “You can recover this.”
“Pay the victims first.”
“Maya, legally—”
“I know what I’m legally required to do.”
I looked at him.
“This is what I choose to do.”
David visited Lily’s grave under supervision on a gray Monday morning.
I stayed across the road in my car.
He walked to her headstone and stopped.
Then he dropped to his knees.
I could not hear what he said.
I was grateful.
Some grief should not belong to an audience.
He stayed twenty minutes.
When he left, I cried.
Not because I wanted him back.
Because there had once been a version of us that ate pancakes on Sundays and took Lily to Navy Pier.
I no longer knew how much of that life had been real.
Two weeks later, the plea agreement was filed.
David admitted to conspiracy, bank fraud, wire fraud, falsified documents, and laundering stolen funds.
He did not admit to causing Lily’s death.
He hadn’t.
I refused to turn my daughter into a crime theory just because I hated her father.
At sentencing, I read my victim statement.
I talked about Lily.
How she hated peas.
How she slept with one sock off.
How she called ambulances “hospital trucks.”
Then I said:
“The worst thing my husband stole was not money. It was time. He trained me to spend years doubting myself, shrinking myself, and waiting for permission. I cannot recover those years. I can decide what I do with the ones I have left.”
The judge asked whether I wanted to add anything.
I looked at David.
“Yes.”
His eyes lifted.
“Lily was brave for the needle.”
His face broke.
May you like
It was the message I had promised Lily I would give him.
I finally had.
