Chapter 8 - The Truth About the Father
Silas was 67.
He stood calmly at the edge of the water.
Juny was beside him.
Mave arrived first.
“Let her go.”
Silas smiled.
“You always were dramatic.”
Mave stepped forward.
“You took my daughter.”
“No.”
“Your people did.”
“Yes.”
“You destroyed my husband.”
“Yes.”
Mave's hands tightened.
Augustine stepped beside her.
Silas looked at him.
“You've always been sentimental, Augustine.”
“My father knew you.”
“Your father worked with me.”
Augustine stared.
“That’s not what the records say.”
“Records are written by survivors.”
Mave looked at Juny.
“Are you hurt?”
Juny shook her head.
Silas spoke.
“She came willingly.”
Mave didn't believe him.
Juny did.
“He didn't hurt me.”
Silas looked at the water.
“Your husband discovered the children.”
Mave stared.
“Why?”
“Because he believed the children were being used as leverage.”
“He tried to stop you.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He threatened to expose us.”
“You killed him.”
“I ordered his death.”
Mave's breathing became steady.
Not because she wasn't angry.
Because she had waited too many years.
“Why Juny?”
Silas answered.
“She was a match for someone in my family.”
“You stole a child to save another.”
“Yes.”
“And when the treatment failed?”
“She was still evidence.”
“So you hid her.”
“Yes.”
Mave looked at Juny.
“Why did you let her live?”
Silas's face changed.
“Because my wife couldn't bear to kill a child.”
That was the first human thing Mave had heard from him.
It did not excuse anything.
It only made the truth more painful.
Cordelia appeared behind Augustine.
She had agreed to testify.
Silas looked at her.
“You betrayed your family.”
Cordelia answered:
“I finally stopped pretending.”
Silas pulled out a gun.
Augustine moved.
Mave moved faster.
She crossed the distance between them and knocked the weapon from Silas's hand.
He stared at her.
“You could have been anything.”
“I was.”
She stepped forward.
“I was a soldier.”
Silas stumbled backward.
Mave stopped herself before striking him.
The promise she had made years ago was still there.
She would not become the thing that had destroyed her.
Police sirens approached.
Cordelia had called them.
Silas laughed.
“You think this ends with prison?”
“No,” Augustine said.
“It ends with records.”
Wendell arrived carrying boxes.
Original records.
Financial documents.
Names.
Dates.
Everything.
Silas looked at the evidence.
Then at Cordelia.
“You think they will thank you?”
“No,” Cordelia said.
“I don't need thanks.”
Police arrested Silas.
Mave watched without satisfaction.
Only exhaustion.
Juny came to her.
“You didn't kill him.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Mave looked toward the harbor.
“Because he already took enough from me.”
The trial lasted months.
Silas and several associates were convicted.
Cordelia cooperated fully and accepted the legal consequences for her own role.
The Ashworth family name collapsed publicly.
Banks froze assets.
Old charities were investigated.
Names once protected by wealth appeared in newspapers.
Mave testified.
She told the court about Juny.
About her husband.
About the children.
She never exaggerated.
She simply told the truth.
Augustine sat behind her every day.
He never spoke for her.
He was there.
That was enough.
Azie also testified.
He admitted his silence.
Mave forgave him slowly.
Not because what he did was harmless.
Because forgiveness, she realized, did not mean forgetting.
It meant refusing to let the past keep deciding what happened next.
Months later, Juny turned eighteen.
Mave baked a cake.
It leaned sideways.
The icing was terrible.
Augustine looked at it.
“Should we call someone?”
Juny laughed.
“No.”
Mave smiled.
“It tastes better than it looks.”
The three of them ate it in the kitchen.
At 2:00 a.m., the lamp was still on.
May you like
But now there were three cups instead of two.
And for the first time, nobody was lonely.
