Chapter 19 - The Restitution
Three months after the sentencing, I received a certified check in the mail from the court trustee. It was the first installment of the restitution fund, generated from the forced sale of my parents' suburban home. Without my income to subsidize their lifestyle and facing massive legal bills and court fines, the house had gone into foreclosure and was sold at auction.
My father had moved into a small, one-bedroom senior living apartment on the outskirts of the city, working a low-wage retail job to supplement his garnished social security checks. He wrote me a sixteen-page letter apologizing for everything, begging for forgiveness and a chance to see me just once to explain himself.
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I didn't open the letter. I carried the sealed envelope to my shredder, dropped it into the slot, and listened to the satisfying hum of the steel blades turning his excuses into confetti.
I took the restitution check, along with the subsequent payments that arrived over the next six months, and deposited every single dollar into a specialized scholarship fund I set up at my alma mater for young women pursuing degrees in cybersecurity and digital forensics. If my family’s greed was going to cost them everything, that money was going to be used to train the next generation of women to catch predators just like them.
