I removed my ex-mother-in-law from my credit card the moment my divorce ended, and by morning my ex was drilling through my door.

The women’s correctional facility was two hours outside of Denver, out on the plains where the wind never stopped blowing and the sky was so big it felt like it could swallow you whole.

Marcus waited in the car like he promised.

I went through security. Empty pockets. Metal detector. Wand. A guard patted me down. Then I was led down a long, linoleum-floored hallway to the visiting room.

It was a big, cold room filled with Formica tables and plastic chairs. A thick wall of glass separated the inmates from the visitors. Phones on either side.

Eleanor was already sitting there.

I almost didn’t recognize her.

Gone was the expensive cream coat. Gone was the perfectly coiffed hair. Gone was the jewelry, the makeup, the aura of arrogant wealth that had surrounded her like a force field for as long as I’d known her.

She was wearing a faded orange jumpsuit. Her hair was gray and cut short, almost like a man’s. She’d lost weight—so much weight that her clothes hung on her. Her face was lined, her hands gnarled with age and the work they made her do in the prison laundry.

She looked old.

Just a tired, beaten old woman in an orange jumpsuit.

I sat down across from her. I picked up the phone.

She picked up hers.

“Natalie,” she said. Her voice was rough. Gravelly. Nothing like the sharp, cultured tones I remembered.

“Eleanor,” I said. “The warden said you had something urgent to tell me.”

She nodded. She looked down at her hands for a long moment. When she looked back up, her eyes were wet.

“I’m dying,” she said.

I blinked.

“What?”

“Lung cancer,” she said. “Advanced. They gave me six months. Maybe less. It’s why I asked you to come. I needed to say… things. Before it’s too late.”

I didn’t say anything. I just waited.

“I know you hate me,” she continued. “And you have every right. I did terrible things to you. To your father. I spent my whole life… chasing. Chasing money. Chasing status. Chasing the kind of life I thought I deserved. And when I couldn’t earn it? I took it. From anyone I could. Especially from people who were too good, too kind, too trusting to see me coming.”

She paused.

“Your father was a good man,” she said quietly. “Better than Thomas ever was. Better than me. I saw that the first time I met him. And I hated him for it. Because he had everything Thomas and I wanted, and he’d earned it honestly. And when he died… I saw my chance. I told Grant to go after you. I told him exactly what to say, exactly how to act. I orchestrated the whole thing. Every minute of it. For six years, I used you. I used your grief. I used your kindness. I stole from you. I lied to you. I tried to destroy you when you finally fought back.”

She looked me dead in the eye.

“I am sorry, Natalie. Truly sorry. Not sorry I got caught. Sorry I did it. Sorry I wasted my life being a monster. Sorry I wasted six years of yours. Sorry I hurt the only daughter David Carter ever had.”

The tears were running freely down her face now.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” she said. “I don’t deserve forgiveness. But I needed you to hear me say it. And there’s one more thing. Something I never told anyone. Not even Thomas. Not even Grant.”

She reached into the pocket of her jumpsuit and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She slid it under the glass to the guard, who brought it around to me.

I opened it.

It was a handwritten letter. Dated 1998. The same year as the trust and the “sale” of Blackpine.

My dearest Eleanor, it read. If you are reading this, then I am dead and you have finally found the courage to do the right thing. I have wronged David Carter. I have stolen his company, his legacy, his daughter’s birthright. I have spent twenty years living a lie. The guilt is eating me alive. I want to make it right. In this envelope, you will find the original trust documents, a full confession, and instructions for transferring Natalie’s fifty percent of Blackpine back to her on her thirtieth birthday, with all back profits and interest. I was going to give it to her myself. But I’m scared. I’m scared of what will happen to our family, to our name, if the truth comes out. If I don’t have the strength to do it before I die… please, Eleanor. Do it for me. Make it right. We’ve taken enough from the Carters. Let us give back before God judges us.

— Thomas

I looked up at Eleanor.

“Thomas wrote this three months before he died,” she said. “I found it in his safe after his funeral. He was going to tell you everything. He was going to give you Blackpine. All of it. With interest. I burned the confession. I hid the original trust documents in the Cherry Creek mansion’s wall safe—you’ll find them behind the paneling in the library, if you haven’t already. And I decided that since Thomas was too weak to keep what we had stolen… I’d just keep stealing. More. Bigger. Forever.”

She shook her head.

“That’s the worst of it, you know?” she said. “If I’d just done what Thomas asked? If I’d just given you what was yours when he died? We would have been fine. We still had our half of Blackpine. We still had our home. We still had our name. But I was greedy. I wanted all of it. And because I couldn’t be satisfied with half… I lost everything. My husband’s legacy. My sons. My daughter. My freedom. My life.”

She leaned forward, pressing her forehead against the glass.

“Tell your father I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Tell him I finally understand what he meant when he said money doesn’t make you rich. It just makes you afraid of losing it.”

She hung up the phone.

She stood up. She didn’t look back. She just walked through the door at the back of the visiting room and was gone.

I sat there for a long time, holding Thomas’s letter in my hand.

I didn’t feel pity for her. She’d made her choices. She’d destroyed lives. She’d gotten exactly what she deserved.

But I didn’t feel hate anymore, either.

Hate was heavy. It was a weight I’d carried for six years, and I was tired of carrying it. She was just a sad, dying old woman in an orange jumpsuit, paying for the mistakes she’d made.

I folded the letter, put it in my purse, and walked out to the car.

Marcus looked at me when I got in.

“Okay?” he asked.

I smiled.