“You’re bringing the record.”
He paused.
“In my experience, the record wins. But it only wins if you keep your nerve while they tell their story.”
I knew what he meant.
The Maddoxes could call me calculating.
They could call me ungrateful.
They could say I had manipulated a dying woman.
I couldn’t control what they said.
I could control how I answered.
The hearing was set for Wednesday morning in the Enis courthouse.
The doors would be open to the public.
That suited me.
The Maddoxes had wanted the town watching.
So had I.
The week before the hearing, their solicitor made one last attempt to settle.
The offer was three million euro.
I would pay the Maddoxes three million.
They would withdraw the claim, sign confidentiality agreements, and go home.
No courtroom.
No public humiliation.
No risk.
Healey explained that it was a real option.
“Some people would take it,” he said. “Pay it, sleep again, and get your life back. I’m obliged to tell you that’s a rational choice.”
I sat quietly.
Three million euro was a staggering amount of money.
It was enough to make most people stop and think.
But there was something underneath the offer that bothered me.
If I paid them, I would be giving their accusation a price.
I would be paying to make them stop saying I had stolen something.
I remembered Norah.
You don’t shout.
You don’t beg.
And, more importantly, I remembered the lesson underneath all her lessons.
Don’t let someone else’s lie decide what you owe.
“No,” I said.
Healey waited.
“I won’t pay them.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“Tell them I’ll see them at the hearing.”
He nodded.
“I thought you might say that.”
The settlement failed.
The Maddoxes responded by turning the noise up.
Brenda gave an interview to a regional paper.
She described them as a grieving American family who had been frozen out by a calculating young woman.
She talked about the daughter they had raised.
She talked about sacrifice.
She cried.
She never mentioned the airport.
She never mentioned the one-way ticket.
She certainly didn’t mention the forty thousand dollars.
Vanessa worked the hotel and coffee shop, telling anyone who would listen that I’d always been cold.
Declan kept supplying his local version.
But the louder they became, the more their story started running into itself.