Chapter 16 - What the Judge WantedAfter the interview, I went outside and found Natalie waiting beneath the courthouse awning. We had never met face-to-face. She looked ordinary in the best possible way: worn boots, a green coat, hair blown loose by the weather. There was no trace of the villain Evelyn had described in all those family stories.
“I used to imagine telling Garrett off,” she said. “A big speech. Something that would make him understand what he did.”
“Did you ever get the chance?”
“No. And I finally understood I didn't need him to understand. I needed myself to stop believing him.”
She handed me a small paper bag containing a paperback book for Chloe. Inside its cover she'd written, You were brave before anybody knew what courage cost you.
“I'm scared she won't want to see me,” Natalie admitted.
“She will,” I said. “But even if she needs time, you gave her something real. You showed her she wasn't imagining it.”
For a moment we stood together watching traffic pass, two women connected by the same family's cruelty and by the choice not to let it be the end of either story.
I met Pike in a government interview room, with attorneys and investigators present. He looked older than his photograph, his shoulders folded inward.
“You wanted to see me,” I said.
“I wanted to apologize.”
“Apologies don't repair skull fractures.”
He nodded once. “No. They don't.”
Pike acknowledged accepting payments through a consulting company connected to the Harringtons. He claimed some were legitimate and others were designed to influence his judgment in disputes. Investigators pressed him for documentation. He had brought records, but he understood that handing them over did not excuse his part in anything.
“Did you know what Garrett was doing to Chloe?” I asked.
“I knew she was under pressure to sign documents. I suspected coercion. I didn't report it.”
“And Natalie?”
His face crumpled. “I was told she stole from them. I took their word when I shouldn't have.”
He pushed a sealed letter toward me. Ortiz stopped him so it could be documented before I saw it.
“Chloe gave this to my assistant,” he said. “She asked that it be delivered to you if she became unreachable.”
The letter was mostly ordinary: instructions for the cat she'd been secretly feeding behind the garage, a reminder that I'd promised to teach her to make pie crust, a list of baby names she'd been considering.
At the bottom she wrote: Mom, if I can't tell you what happened, remember this: I kept trying to leave because you taught me I deserved better.
I sat there, unable to speak.
Pike cleared his throat. “There's a reason Evelyn was so desperate to control that child.”
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I looked up.
“The Harrington trust changes control when Garrett becomes a father,” he said. “And the documents she wanted Chloe to sign would have given Evelyn power over both mother and baby.”
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