Jason called me that night. “They got Derek,” he said. “I heard.”
“He stole everything, Dad.
Everything I was supposed to build for you and Mom.”
I did not answer immediately. Then I said, “You’re building it now.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Jason whispered, “Yeah.
I am.”
Amber’s trial began on December 15, 2024, in the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in downtown Phoenix. Kathy and I did not attend.
Our part of the story was over. Jason went. He sat in the back row every day alone.
The trial lasted four days. Amber’s public defender had advised her to plead guilty. The evidence was too much.
Millions of people had watched her refuse to pay for a sick woman’s dinner on Mother’s Day. The jury pool had been shaped by public outrage before a single formal question was asked. Amber wanted to fight at first.
Then, on day three, prosecutors played the full eighteen-minute raw video in open court, including the moment she laughed about the blank card and said, “At your age, simple is best.”
On day four, she entered a guilty plea on all twelve counts. Judge Patricia Moreno sentenced her to five years in federal prison, restitution of $230,000 to be paid after release, three years of supervised probation, mandatory financial counseling, and a permanent ban from holding fiduciary responsibility over vulnerable older adults. Derek Hartman was sentenced the following week.
Eight years. The accounting records were irrefutable. I read about it all in the newspaper.
Jason sent me a text after Amber’s sentencing. It’s done. I replied, How are you?
He did not answer for six hours. When he finally did, he wrote, I don’t know, Dad. I really don’t know.
That night, I sat at the kitchen table with the paper spread in front of me. The headline read: Guilty Verdict in Mother’s Day Elder Abuse Case. Five Years for Influencer.
There was a photo of Amber being led from the courthouse, head down, hair covering her face. I stared at it for a long time. I did not feel victorious.
I felt tired. Sad for Jason, who had loved a woman capable of turning his mother’s suffering into strategy. Sad for Amber, who had traded her future for handbags, attention, lies, and restaurant bills.
Sad for the waste of it all. “Hank?” Kathy called from the living room. “You coming to bed?”
“In a minute.”
I folded the newspaper carefully.
When I walked into the living room, Kathy had fallen asleep on the couch. Her head rested on a pillow Jason had bought her the month before, soft and hypoallergenic, the kind that did not irritate her skin. Her insulin pump was clipped to her waistband.
Her foot, finally healing, rested on a cushion. I sat beside her and took her hand. Outside, the December night was cool and still.
Somewhere across town, my son was probably sitting in his apartment trying to make sense of what he had lost and what he still might repair. Somewhere in federal custody, Amber was learning the cost of cruelty. Somewhere else, Derek was beginning to do the same.
But in that small living room, Kathy breathed steadily, her hand warm in mine. Justice had been served. The law had spoken.
But none of that mattered as much as this:
Kathy was alive. Jason was trying. And for the first time in years, I believed we might actually be okay.
On June 20, 2025, thirteen months after that Mother’s Day dinner and six months after Amber’s sentencing, Kathy and I sat together in Dr. Sarah Morrison’s exam room. Dr.
Morrison walked in with two thick folders under her arm and a smile doctors give when the news is better than expected. “Hank,” she said, setting the folders down. “Your PSA is 0.8.”
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