His mask slipped.
“You don’t know what it was like taking care of her.”
I leaned forward.
“Then explain it. Explain what it was like to take her savings while she was too weak to fight. Explain what it was like to marry another woman while your wife lay in hospice. Explain what it was like to plan your future around her insurance payout.”
His jaw tightened.
“She was dying anyway,” he muttered.
Nathan looked at Colin’s attorney.
“There it is.”
The mediation ended quickly after that.
Colin surrendered all claims to the insurance money. He withdrew any challenge to Lily’s new trust. He signed a formal correction of the lies he had made about her mental state.
As he stood to leave, I looked at him one last time.
“My silence after today is not forgiveness,” I said. “It is disgust.”
Two weeks later, his firm fired him with cause.
The insurance claim was permanently denied.
The file went to state investigators.
Colin Mercer’s golden future collapsed before he could spend a dollar of my daughter’s death.
Part 8: What Remained
Six months later, I moved to Juneau.
Not all at once. Grief does not move in straight lines.
I rented Lily’s small apartment month to month. I kept her chipped mugs in the cupboard and the magnets from her students on the refrigerator.
Then I launched the Lily Brooks Teacher Relief Foundation.
At first, it was small.
A grant for a teacher needing travel money for treatment in Seattle.
Emergency rent for a science teacher recovering from surgery.
Books for underfunded classrooms.
