Rob nodded slowly.
“And now what?” he asked.
“Now comes the hard part,” I said, sitting down again. “Rebuilding our family. Healing the wounds. Recovering the lost time.”
“Do you think it’s possible?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But we are going to try. Because despite everything, you are still my son. And Ethan deserves to have his father back.”
Spencer and Counselor Rodriguez said goodbye discreetly. Linda packed up her equipment and left too, not without giving me a knowing wink.
Rob and I were left alone at that table under the cherry tree, with a half-drunk pitcher of iced tea and donuts no one had touched.
“Can I see Ethan today?” Rob asked.
“If he wants to see you, yes.”
“And if he doesn’t want to?”
“Then you’ll wait,” I said. “And you’ll keep waiting until he’s ready. Because that’s what parents do, Rob. They wait. They fight. They don’t give up.”
“Like you never gave up on me,” he said quietly. “Like you never gave up on us.”
I paid the bill, and we walked out of the restaurant together. The afternoon sun painted the sky orange and pink. The city buzzed with its usual noise—horns, street vendors, music coming from a nearby store. It was an ordinary day for everyone else. But for us, it was the first day of the rest of our lives. The first day without Chelsea poisoning everything around her. The first day of a possible healing.
And although the path would be long and painful, at least now we could walk it together.
Chelsea would face justice. But the real battle was just beginning: proving to Ethan that we could be a family again. And that would require something more than evidence and arrests.
It would require love, patience, and time.
Three months after the arrest, I was sitting in the courtroom of the Supreme Court building. The place smelled of old wood and ancient papers. The polished wooden benches were full of people—journalists who had followed the case, onlookers, families of Chelsea’s previous victims.
Ethan was sitting to my right, in a suit we had bought especially for this occasion. To my left, Rob. In the preceding weeks, father and son had begun a slow process of reconciliation. It wasn’t easy. There were tears, uncomfortable silences, difficult conversations. But they were trying—and that was all that mattered.
