Chapter 8 - The Price of Ruin
By the time the day after Christmas arrived, the suburbs of Chicago were quiet, but the shockwaves rippling out of Elmhurst had shattered the Marino family's social standing beyond repair.
The snowplows had finally cleared the main avenues, but nothing could clear the disaster inside Frank Marino’s home.
The living room looked like a disaster zone. Natalie sat on the sofa, her eyes swollen from thirty-six hours of crying, surrounded by empty coffee mugs and crumpled tissues. Her children were sitting on the floor in silence, eating cold cereal out of plastic bowls because there was nothing else left in the pantry, and nobody had gone grocery shopping.
The front door opened, and Frank walked in.
He looked as though he had aged fifteen years in two days. His shoulders were slumped, his coat was stained with salt, and his face was gray. He dropped his car keys onto the entry table where, four days earlier, a box of expensive almond cookies had sat abandoned.
"Well?" Rose asked, hurrying out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron that Valerie had bought her three Christmases ago. "Did you speak to the bank?"
Frank didn't look at her. He walked into the living room and collapsed into his recliner—the chair Valerie had paid for when his back went out.
"It’s over, Rose," Frank whispered, staring at his worn shoes.
"What do you mean, it’s over?" Natalie snapped, standing up, her voice shrill and desperate. "What about my house?! Kenneth said his partners locked him out of his email! They changed the locks on his office door yesterday!"
"Marino Transport is entering involuntary Chapter 7 liquidation on Monday," Frank said, his voice completely flat, drained of every drop of the bombastic arrogance he had carried his whole life. "The Apex Harbor receivers took physical possession of twelve tractors this morning. The secondary line called the loan. There is no payroll. There are no assets. The bank is initiating foreclosure proceedings on this house by the end of January."
Rose shrieked, clutching her face. "Foreclosure?! Our house?! Frank, you can't let them take our house! Call Uncle Peter! Call Aunt Louise! They have money!"
Frank let out a dry, wheezing laugh that sounded like dry leaves scraping over concrete. "Peter called me an hour ago, Rose. Natalie’s little scene at the country club was the talk of the entire neighborhood yesterday. Louise told Peter that if he gave us a single dime, she’d divorce him. Nobody is lending us money. Nobody is taking our calls. In their eyes, we’re toxic. We’re the family that tried to steal from Dominic Vale’s chief executive."
"She’s not a chief executive!" Natalie screamed, tears spilling down her cheeks again. "She’s my sister! She’s supposed to help us! She’s the one who was supposed to be here! If she had just watched the kids like she was supposed to, none of this would have happened!"
Frank slowly lifted his head and looked at Natalie. For the first time in his life, there was no indulgence in his eyes for his golden, favored older daughter. There was only bitter, exhausted clarity.
"Shut up, Natalie," Frank said, his voice dead.
Natalie blinked, stunned. "Dad...?"
"Shut your mouth," Frank said, leaning forward. "Valerie didn't do this to us. We did this to ourselves. You wanted to save four hundred dollars on a babysitter. Rose wanted to save forty dollars on a ham. And I wanted to treat the most capable person in this family like an unpaid maid while borrowing half a million dollars from the man who signs her paychecks."
He covered his face with his calloused, trembling hands.
"She carried this entire family for ten years," Frank sobbed, the tears finally leaking through his fingers. "She paid the taxes on this house. She fixed your credit when you got out of college, Natalie. She managed the books that kept my company breathing. And what did we give her? An air mattress in the basement."
Rose stood frozen in the center of the room, her lips trembling, the harsh, undeniable truth finally penetrating the thick layer of her narcissistic delusion.
The house was cold.
The bills were due.
The children were hungry.
May you like
And the daughter who had fixed everything for thirty years was gone.
***
