Chapter 9 - The Settlement
The final settlement conference took place six months later, in late April, in the quiet, wood-paneled chambers of Judge Margaret Cross on the eighteenth floor of the Richard J. Daley Center.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city of Chicago was shaking off the winter. The lake was a deep, brilliant turquoise under the spring sun, and the trees along the boulevard were bursting into pale green buds that looked like mist hanging over the gray stone architecture.
I sat at the long mahogany table wearing a simple navy linen dress, my hair cut into a sharp, chin-length bob, completely free of the nervous habit I used to have of twisting my grandmother's ring whenever my family was mentioned.
Beside me sat Theo, wearing his gray charcoal suit, his laptop closed on the wood before him.
Across the table sat Bianca.
She was twenty-six, but she looked thirty-five. She had abandoned the extensions and the fake tan; her natural dark brown hair was pulled back into an austere clip, and she wore a plain gray blazer from an outlet rack in Schaumburg. She had spent the last five months working thirty-two hours a week as an intake clerk at an animal shelter in Arlington Heights—the only job that would accommodate her court-mandated restitution schedule.
Beside her sat a junior public defender named Miller, who looked like he had sixty other files waiting in his trunk.
Renata was not present.
Under the terms of the criminal diversion agreement she had signed in February to avoid a five-year sentence for federal mail fraud, she had surrendered all claims to the Castellin estate, accepted a permanent three-year term of supervised administrative probation, and relocated to an independent senior living apartment in Rockford, funded entirely by a modest municipal annuity derived from her late sister’s estate. She was legally barred from entering Cook County without forty-eight hours' written notice to the adult probation department.
"The accounting has been finalized," Judge Cross announced, adjusting her glasses and laying a fifty-page document in the center of the table. "The proceeds from the judicial sale of the Naperville residence—one million, one hundred and forty thousand dollars after satisfaction of the municipal tax liens—have been transferred to the receiver's master account."
The judge looked over the top of her frames at Bianca.
"Miss Castellin," the judge said. "The forensic audit confirmed that between twenty-twenty-one and twenty-twenty-five, you received direct personal disbursements totaling four hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars from accounts derived from the unlawful liquidation of the Cicero parcels."
Bianca flinched, her eyes dropping to the mahogany surface, her hands clutched tightly in her lap.
"Under the proposed global restructuring agreement submitted by Kirkland & Ellis," Judge Cross continued, "your sister, Naomi Castellin, has exercised her statutory authority as the sole surviving managing trustee of the Castellin Operating Entity."
The judge turned to me. "Mrs. Castellin, would you like to place your terms on the record?"
I looked at my sister.
I looked at the girl I had shared a bedroom with in Cicero when the freight trains rattled the sash windows every twenty minutes; the girl whose ballet slippers I had washed by hand in the bathroom sink because our mother was too busy drinking white wine on the patio to notice that the recital was on Friday.
"The criminal restitution claims regarding the luxury car lease and the retail accounts will be waived," I said, my voice completely steady, devoid of the ancient, desperate need to be understood.
Bianca’s head jerked up, her eyes wide, glistening with sudden, disbelieving tears. "Naomi... you’re... you’re dropping the charges?"
"I am dropping the civil fraud actions against you personally, Bianca," I said. "And the court will authorize the release of three thousand two hundred dollars a month from the spendthrift trust for your living expenses, indexed to inflation."
She let out a long, ragged breath that sounded like a sob, reaching across the table with her trembling hands. "Thank you. Oh God, Naomi, thank you. I’m so sorry. I didn't know what Mom was doing with the deeds, I swear to God I didn't know—"
"I’m not finished," I said.
The room went instantly still.
Bianca’s hands stopped four inches from mine, hovering above the mahogany wood.
"The spendthrift trust distributions will be conditioned upon two things," I stated, looking straight into her brown eyes. "First: you will maintain your thirty-two hours a week at the shelter or another certified non-profit organization until your thirty-fifth birthday. If you miss two consecutive quarters of verified employment, the trustee will suspend the distribution and redirect the funds to the Northwestern Pediatric Trauma Fund."
Bianca swallowed hard, her throat clicking, but she nodded once. "Yes. I can do that. I like the dogs. I'm good with the dogs."
"And second," I continued, "you will never contact me, my husband, or my daughter again. If you send a card, if you send an email, if you appear within five hundred feet of my home or Claire’s school... the civil waiver is revoked, and the four-hundred-and-eighty-thousand-dollar judgment will be filed with the county recorder within twenty-four hours."
Bianca’s face went completely white.
"Naomi," she whispered, her voice cracking into pieces. "She’s my niece. You’re my sister. We’re the only ones left."
"We were never a family, Bianca," I said softly. "We were just four people living inside our father's balance sheet. And the balance sheet is closed."
I stood up.
Theo rose beside me, picking up his leather portfolio, sliding his hand naturally into the small of my back—warm, steady, unyielding.
Judge Cross looked at the two of us, a faint, approving tilt to her chin, before she brought her small wooden gavel down against the sound block with a clean, sharp crack.
"The agreement is approved as modified," the judge said. "Court is adjourned."
May you like
I didn't look back as we walked through the heavy leather-padded doors into the bright marble corridor of the Daley Center.
We took the express elevator down to the plaza, walking out into the April sunshine where the Picasso sculpture threw its great, angular shadow across the pavement, and the wind from the river was blowing sweet, clean, and entirely free.
