Chapter 5 - The New Year’s Dawn
By 2:00 AM, the house was silent.
The guests were gone.
The catering staff had been paid off by Joshua and sent home.
Austin and Peyton had been escorted out with nothing but three suitcases and their dignity in tatters.
They were staying in a cheap motel on the edge of town, their bank accounts frozen pending an audit of my stolen pension.
I sat in the living room, in a chair I hadn't been allowed to sit in for a year.
Joshua sat beside me.
He was holding my hands in his, rubbing a soothing ointment into the cracks.
"It’s over, Gianna," he said.
"We’re going back to Detroit tomorrow."
"What about the house?" I asked.
"We’re selling it," Joshua said.
"Every penny of the sale will go into a trust for Jesse’s education."
"But Austin won't be the trustee. Silas will."
"Austin and Peyton will have to find out what it’s like to work for a living."
"They’ll have to find out what a Detroit mechanic knows—that nothing is free."
I looked around the beautiful room.
It didn't feel like a home. It felt like a monument to a mistake.
We had thought that giving him everything was love.
We realized now that love requires boundaries.
Love requires respect.
The sun began to rise over the Columbus skyline.
It was January 1st. A New Year.
My hands still hurt, but for the first time in a year, I could breathe without the scent of bleach.
We walked out to Joshua’s truck.
He helped me into the seat, treating me like the queen I had forgotten I was.
As we drove away from the north side, I didn't look back.
I looked at the man beside me.
The man who had spent forty-three years protecting me.
The man who knew that a deed is just paper, but a promise is forever.
"Joshua?" I said.
"Yeah, Gianna?"
"Happy New Year."
He squeezed my hand gently.
"Happy New Year, sweetheart."
We headed north, toward the city of rust and grit.
Toward the garage and the ledger books.
Toward a life where our hands might be dirty, but our hearts were finally clean.
May you like
The Bailey legacy wasn't a house.
It was the strength to take it back.
