Godmother To His Son Then I Took His Kingdom Chapter 30
Two years later, the Reyes Center for Law and Art officially opened in Santa Fe.
There was no red carpet at the entrance.
The people who came were lawyers, artists, victims who had received aid from the foundation, and local families who had brought their children to see the exhibitions.
The first floor offered free legal consultations. The second held public studio space. And in the most prominent place in the main hall hung Eli’s painting of the laundromat.
There was only one line on the plaque beneath it.
*For the people who taught me what honest work and a blameless life looked like.*
My father’s old pocket watch sat on my desk upstairs.
The ultrasound photo was tucked into the deepest drawer, beside a letter I had written to the child who was never born.
No one else would ever see them.
But I knew they had all remained part of my life, in their own ways.
Leo was eleven now.
He stood on a small stage introducing the youth arts program. His voice was still a little nervous, but he no longer shied away from the cameras.
When he finished, he ran over to me.
“Godmother, I didn’t mess up, did I?”
“Not a single word.”
“The advocate said that next year, I can decide for myself if I want the Cabots to keep having visitation.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then take your time.”
He nodded, then was quickly pulled away by his friends.
I had not forgiven Evelyn for his sake, nor had I taught him to hate the Cabots.
That was his life. He would decide for himself what to keep and what to let go.
After the opening ceremony, my lawyer handed me the final annual report.
Every dollar of Graham’s estate had now been invested into aid programs.
Over the past three years, the foundation had helped hundreds of victims secure restraining orders, find legal representation, and get emergency housing. At the end of the accounts, the remaining balance was recorded with absolute clarity.
I signed my name at the bottom.
Mara Reyes.
The same name I had written on that surgical consent form years ago.
Back then, lying on a cold hospital bed, I had thought that name meant I was alone again.
Now, it was written on the company, the foundation, and the doors of this center.
It was no longer what was left of me after losing someone else.
It was simply all of me.
By evening, the crowd had thinned.
Eli locked the gallery doors and came to stand beside me.
“Ready to go home?”
I looked across the street.
Leo was chasing his friends through the sunset, his laughter carried on the wind.
The mountains in the distance were washed in gold and red, as vast and steady as they had been the day I first arrived.
I had once thought rebirth meant forgetting.
Later, I understood it didn’t.
The wounds had left scars. The people I’d lost would never come back. Real rebirth was this: carrying all of it forward and still living, without letting any of it decide where I was going next.
I took Eli’s hand.
“Let’s go home.”
We walked down the steps side by side.
On the glass doors behind us, the name REYES caught the last light of the setting sun, bright and unwavering.
This time, no one had handed me a place out of charity, and no one else had defined my happiness.
Every step from here on would be my own.
The End