Chapter 23 - Rochelle Visits MarcusRochelle visited her son every month.
She never pretended incarceration was something noble.
She also never abandoned him.
Marcus sat across the visitation table.
He looked older.
Not destroyed.
Changed.
“How’s Nia?” he asked.
“Good.”
“Northline?”
“She closed it.”
His face fell.
“Because of me?”
“Yes.”
Rochelle did not soften the answer.
Marcus nodded.
“She started another company?”
“She’s freelancing under her own name.”
“Good.”
“How’s Simone?”
Rochelle paused.
“She bought the bakery building.”
Marcus looked up.
“She did?”
“Yes.”
A complicated smile crossed his face.
“Good.”
“She did it without you.”
He looked at his mother.
“I know.”
Rochelle continued.
“Ashley got promoted.”
“I heard.”
“You ask about them every visit.”
Marcus looked down.
“I want to know they’re okay.”
“Why?”
He frowned.
“Because I care.”
“Or because if they’re okay, you feel less guilty?”
Marcus went still.
Prison therapy had apparently not protected him from his mother learning boundaries.
“That’s harsh.”
“Yes.”
He thought.
“Both.”
Rochelle nodded.
“That’s probably true.”
Marcus looked through the glass toward another family.
A child pressed both hands to the divider.
“I kept telling myself I was doing things for people.”
“I know.”
“The building for Simone.”
“Yes.”
“The wedding for Ashley.”
Rochelle stared.
“The wedding was not for Ashley.”
Marcus flinched.
“No.”
“It was for you.”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to do when you get out?”
He looked at her.
“Work.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
Marcus laughed.
“What?”
“For once you don’t have a grand plan.”
He smiled sadly.
“I’m trying not to.”
Rochelle reached across the table.
“You were always terrified of being ordinary.”
Marcus’s eyes filled.
“Dad left us ordinary.”
“No.”
“He left us broke.”
“That’s different.”
Marcus looked away.
Rochelle continued.
“You thought money could make nobody leave.”
He swallowed.
“I know.”
“So you built money out of lies.”
“Yes.”
She squeezed his hand.
“You cannot repay what you did by becoming successful enough.”
Marcus nodded.
That sentence hurt.
It also freed him from an impossible fantasy.
Outside the prison, Rochelle sat in her car and cried.
Loving someone through consequences was different from protecting them from consequences.
She had finally learned the difference.
At the bakery, Simone received a letter from Marcus.
Danielle had told him personal letters no longer needed to route through counsel if Simone did not want that boundary.
Simone had said one final letter was acceptable.
Marcus wrote:
I heard you bought the building. I will not say I always knew you could because I realize now how often I turned belief into ownership. You did it. That is enough.
Simone read the sentence twice.
No request.
No apology repeated.
No hope of reunion.
She folded the letter.
This time she did not put it in legal files.
She placed it in a drawer.
Not sacred.
Not evidence.
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Just history.
Then she returned to work.
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