Three days after the secondary property, the regulatory confirmation arrives.
It comes through the legal team at seven in the morning, a formal notification, six pages, the specific dry language of institutions acknowledging that what was submitted is sufficient and that the asset seizure process is now active across all documented nodes including the seventh. Faye's mother reads it at the operations table with her tea and her composed attention and when she finishes she sets it down and says, "It's done," in the tone of someone who has been waiting to say those two words for twenty-nine years.
I am standing in the doorway. I watch her sit with it for a moment, just a moment, just the private weight of a thing completed and then she picks up her tea and she is composed again and she says
