The Real Garcia Chapter 08
Sirens. Growing closer.
Two police officers entered. “Daniel Harrington and Lily Jones. You are under arrest for identity fraud and unlawful assumption of another’s legal rights.”
Handcuffs clicked onto his wrists.
As they led him away, he looked back at the urn in my mother’s arms.
“Forgive me, Garcia. Forgive me.”
Fifty years too late.
My grandmother could not hear him.
But that was all right.
I had evened the score.
That night, State University issued a formal statement. Daniel Harrington was permanently dismissed, all honors revoked, and referred for criminal prosecution.
The National Academy of Fine Arts announced that Lily Jones had her membership revoked, all titles revoked, and was permanently banned from rejoining.
Isabelle Harrington had her degrees rescinded and was banned from the legal profession for life.
I read each notice, then turned off my phone.
My mother sat beside me. Her hands were still shaking. They had been shaking ever since she walked into that
room.
I took her hand.
“Mom. We did it.”
Her lips trembled. No words came. Tears traced the deep lines on her face and fell onto my hand.
On a sunny day, we buried my grandmother.
We chose a cemetery on the edge of the city, a plot facing south for the best light. The headstone was small, but the name engraved on it was real. Garcia.
She had been trapped in that rural backwater for fifty years, denied even a family grave.
Today, she finally left that forgotten farmland behind.
Finally, she could be remembered by her own name.
My mother knelt before the grave and placed her needle scarred hands on the stone. She did not cry. She just knelt there, quietly, for a very long time.
I knelt beside her and touched the stone. “Grandma,” I said. “This justice is fifty years late. But we brought it for you.”
The wind blew. The sun was warm on my face.
Afterward, I returned to my partner’s office. David Johnson had been removed by a partnership vote. The same office, but different now. I was the senior managing partner.
I reposted the offer list. The same candidate I had chosen. An excellent student from a poor family, raised by grandparents who collected scrap metal to send him to school.
On his first day, he stood in my office, his eyes red.
“Ms. Smith, before I came, I kept thinking about what I would say to you. I wanted to say thank you, But those two words are too light for what you have done.”
I handed him his ID badge.
“You are standing here today because you walked every step of the way. I just cleared a rock from your path. One day, you will sit in some chair, and people will wait for your nod, for your help. When that day comes, remember where you started.”
He paused. Then he lowered his head and put on the badge carefully. When he walked out, the light in his eyes grew brighter.
Sunlight fell through the window onto the case files on my desk.
Inside those files, there were probably more Garcias, still trapped in their own forgotten corners of the rural West.
I placed my hand on the files.
The next battle would start here.
