I thought my daughter’s teddy bear held her goodbye, until the recorder inside played my sister’s voice planning something far worse.

The trial was six months later. It was the biggest case the city had ever seen. News cameras lined the steps of the courthouse every day. Reporters camped out on the sidewalk. The whole country was watching.

The prosecution’s case was ironclad. They had the two recordings — the one from the bear, the one Emma had hidden in the other seam. They had the bank records, the spreadsheets, Voss’s prescription pads, the text messages, the deed to the Costa Rican villa. They had Grant’s confession, given in exchange for a life sentence instead of the death penalty. They had Detective Marlow’s testimony, the forensic reports, the toxicology screen the medical examiner had finally run on Emma’s body — which had found traces of the exact drugs Voss had prescribed, in doses high enough to kill a grown man, let alone a seven-year-old girl.

The defense tried everything. They tried to say the recordings were fake. They tried to say I’d planted the evidence. They tried to paint Melissa as a battered woman, forced into it by Grant’s abusive control. They even tried to say Emma had really died of Leigh syndrome, that the drugs in her system had been therapeutic, given to ease her pain.

But none of it worked. The jury didn’t buy any of it. How could they? They’d listened to the recordings. They’d heard Melissa’s voice, cold and calculating, arguing about the dosage. They’d seen the photos of Emma, bright and smiling, juxtaposed with the bank records showing hundreds of thousands of dollars flowing into offshore accounts while she wasted away.

The jury deliberated for eight hours. When they came back, the verdict was unanimous on all counts.

Guilty of murder in the first degree. Guilty of conspiracy. Guilty of wire fraud. Guilty of money laundering. Guilty of child endangerment.

The judge sentenced Melissa to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional one hundred and twenty years for the other charges. She would die in prison. Alone. Unloved. Forgotten.

Grant got the same deal he’d agreed to — life without parole, in a maximum security facility, in protective custody. The DA told me it was for his own safety. The other inmates didn’t take kindly to men who killed children for money. He’d spend the rest of his life in a six-by-eight cell, alone with his thoughts, knowing he’d never see the beach in Costa Rica, never spend a dime of the money he’d stolen.

I sat in the courtroom through it all, Winston on the bench next to me, Emma’s school photo in my wallet. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just sat there, quiet, while the judge read the verdict. It didn’t bring her back. Nothing would ever bring her back. But it was justice. The kind she’d wanted. The kind she’d fought for, even when she was too sick to get out of bed.

After the sentencing, Detective Marlow met me on the steps of the courthouse. The reporters swarmed us, shouting questions, but she led me through them to her car, away from the noise.

“It’s over,” she said, leaning against the hood, handing me a cigarette. I didn’t smoke, but I took it, lighting it with my dad’s old Zippo. “You did good, David. Emma would be proud.”

I exhaled a plume of smoke, watching the cars drive by. “I keep expecting to wake up. For it all to be a bad dream. For her to come running into my room, jumping on the bed, begging for strawberry pancakes.”

Marlow nodded, her face soft. “I know. Grief never really goes away. It just… gets smaller. Easier to carry. You learn to live with it.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out an envelope, handing it to me. “The DA authorized this. It’s the remaining money from the GoFundMe. After we seized all the accounts, recovered what we could from the Caymans… it’s a little over two hundred thousand. It’s yours. Do whatever you want with it.”

I looked at the envelope, then handed it back to her. “Donate it. All of it. To the children’s hospital. To research for mitochondrial diseases. To whatever. I don’t want it. Every dollar of that money is stained with her blood. I can’t touch it.”

Marlow stared at me for a second, then nodded, taking the envelope back. “I’ll make sure it gets to the right place.”

She got in her car and drove away. I stood there on the steps for a long time, the cigarette burning down to my fingers, until the sun went down and the streetlights came on.

I drove home. The house was quiet, too quiet. I walked into Emma’s room, which I’d left exactly how it was the day she died — her unicorn posters on the wall, her toys in the toy box, her sheets still smelling faintly of strawberry shampoo.

I sat down on the bed and pulled Winston out of my bag, setting him next to me.

“We did it, baby,” I said softly to the empty room. “They’re gone. They’ll never hurt anyone ever again.”

I lay back on the bed, holding Winston tight, and for the first time since she died, I let myself really cry. Not the quiet, controlled sobs I’d let out in private. Big, heaving, body-shaking sobs that seemed like they’d never end. I cried for her. For the birthdays she’d never have. For the first days of school, the boyfriends, the wedding, the grandchildren I’d never get to see. For all the moments we’d lost.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Eventually, the tears stopped. I felt… empty. But lighter, somehow. Like a weight I’d been carrying for a year had finally been lifted off my chest.

I sat up, wiping my face, and looked at Winston. His button eye glinted in the streetlight coming through the window. And I noticed something I’d never seen before. A small, loose stitch on his other paw, the one that hadn’t been burned in the mill.

I picked at it with my fingernail. The seam opened. Inside was a small, folded piece of paper.

I pulled it out, my hands shaking. It was a drawing, done in crayon, in Emma’s messy seven-year-old handwriting.

It was me and her, holding hands, big smiles on our faces. The sun was shining. There was a rainbow in the sky. And at the bottom, written in pink crayon, were the words:

I LOVE YOU DADDY. DON’T BE SAD. I’M ALWAYS WITH YOU IN WINNY. — EMMA

I stared at the drawing, a small, wobbly smile touching my lips. Of course. She’d hidden one last thing. One last message for me. One last gift.