The garden on my father’s Virginia estate was in full bloom. The cherry blossoms were falling like pink snow.
I sat on a stone bench, feeling the sun on my face. My body had healed almost completely. The scars on my back had faded, becoming fine white lines. The scar over my heart—the empty space where my baby should have been—was still raw, but now it was bearable.
While sitting on the bench, I picked up the Washington Post.
The headline read: “Former lawyer David Miller sentenced to 25 years.”
I read the article.
David had been charged at the federal level. Assaulting a relative of a federal judge carried severe penalties.
But they found other things too. When my father’s friends started investigating, they discovered that David had been defrauding clients. They found fraud. They found everything.
He pleaded guilty, sobbing in court, begging for mercy. The judge—a man my father had advised twenty years earlier—sentenced him to the maximum penalty.
Sylvia had been sentenced to ten years for complicity and obstruction of justice.
They were gone. Erased.
My father left the house with two cups of tea. He sat down next to me.
“Are you reading the news?” he asked gently.
“Only the comics,” I lied, folding the newspaper.
He smiled. “You look good, Anna. Stronger.”
“I feel stronger,” I said. “Yesterday I applied to Georgetown Law School.”
My father raised an eyebrow. “Law? I thought you hated law.”
“I hated the pressure,” I corrected. “I hated expectations. But… I realized something that night in the kitchen.”
“What’s that?”
“The law is a weapon,” I said. “David tried to use it like a club to beat me. He thought it belonged to him because he memorized the words.”
I took a sip of tea.
But he was wrong. The law belongs to those who are willing to fight for it. It belongs to the truth.
My father hugged me. “You’re going to be a terrible lawyer, Anna.”
“I intend to be,” I said.
I looked at the garden. I thought about the baby I lost. I would never hold him again.
But I would make sure his memory meant something. I would spend the rest of my life making sure that men like David, men who thrive on silence and fear, never won again.
He was no longer the servant. He was no longer the victim.
I was Anna Thorne. And I was the law.
