The first restitution payments went out on a Tuesday.
Aria knew the exact time — nine forty-seven in the morning — because Helen Park texted her when the fund administrator confirmed the transfers. Seventeen payments. Seventeen families. The first installment of a process that would take months to complete but had started, finally, actually started.
She was at her desk when the text came.
She read it. Set her phone down. Looked at her screen for a moment.
Then she went to make coffee — not because she needed it but because she needed something to do with her hands while she felt what she was feeling. Standing at the small office kitchen with the coffee brewing she thought about her father signing papers he didn't understand on an afternoon that had ended everything. She thought about H
