Chapter 8 - Rebuilding from the Ground Up
The conference room of Harrison & Miller Legal Partners smelled of old leather, polished mahogany, and expensive coffee.
Attorney Marcus Harrison—a sharp, silver-haired litigator with a reputation for destroying white-collar criminals—slid a thick sheaf of legal papers across the glass table toward me.
“Mr. Bradley, we’ve gone over every single document seized by the police department from your mother’s possession, as well as the fraudulent HELOC applications filed under your name,” Mr. Harrison said, adjusting his reading glasses. “The state’s case is ironclad. Teresa Bradley and your cousin Mason are currently facing multiple felony counts of grand larceny, identity theft, forgery, and wire fraud. Given the premeditated nature of the financial fraud, the district attorney is not offering plea deals involving probation.”
I sat back in my leather chair, feeling a cold, righteous sense of closure. “What about the property? Are there any encumbrances left on the house?”
“None that will hold up in court,” Mr. Harrison assured me, tapping a stamped court document. “We’ve already filed an emergency injunction freezing all remaining accounts held in Teresa’s name, and we’ve initiated civil forfeiture proceedings to recover the funds she embezzled from you over the last three years. Every single penny she stole will be clawed back, down to the last sequined dress.”
“Good,” I said firmly. “Let’s move forward with maximum prosecution.”
Before returning to the suburbs, I made one more stop.
I drove to the boutique in Green Hills where I had purchased the royal-blue silk dress weeks earlier. I walked in, exchanged the original shopping bag for a larger one, and added a custom bouquet of fresh white lilies and a brand-new laptop so Amy could finally finish her master’s degree in library science online—something Teresa had forbidden her to do under the guise of “saving time for housework.”
When we pulled into our driveway on Monday evening, the media vans were gone. The police tape had been removed, and the neighborhood had returned to its quiet, peaceful rhythm.
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The house inside, however, needed a thorough cleansing.
With Amy’s blessing, I hired a professional bio-hazard and deep-cleaning crew to strip the living room down to the studs if necessary. Every trace of my mother’s toxic presence—every expensive catering remnant, every vulgar memory of that nightmare birthday party—was hauled out to a massive commercial dumpster in the driveway.
