Chapter 9 - The Eviction of the Past
Two weeks later, the morning air was crisp and smelling of burning maple leaves.
Ruby was sitting in the front passenger seat of my silver SUV, a pale blue knit beanie covering her stitches, her seatbelt securely fastened across her chest. She was happily coloring in a book full of cartoon golden retrievers, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth in total concentration.
We were parked across the street from my parents’ house in Oakridge.
Beside my car sat a white moving van with two uniformed movers carrying heavy cardboard boxes out the front door.
A real estate sign stood on the lawn where the ambulance had churned the grass two weeks earlier:
*FORECLOSURE SALE: BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEE.*
When Richard had defaulted on the private loan agreement I had maintained through my family trust—an agreement he had signed five years ago when I bailed him out of his second mortgage—the bank didn't hesitate. With Greg Sterling’s political fall, the local banks no longer offered the Carters courtesy extensions.
The house was gone.
My father stood on the porch, wearing an old flannel shirt, looking twenty years older than he had on the day he told me Vanessa had 'barely touched' my daughter. His shoulders were slumped, his hair uncombed, his hands jammed deep into his pockets.
Evelyn sat on the top step beside two worn suitcases, staring at the ground, clutching a framed photograph of Vanessa’s high school graduation.
I rolled down my window three inches.
Richard saw the car. He hesitated, then walked down the brick pathway toward the curb, his steps slow and dragging.
He stopped three feet from my door.
“Emma,” he said, his voice hoarse, stripped of every ounce of the booming authority he had wielded my entire life.
I looked at him through the glass.
“The sheriff gave us until five o'clock,” Richard said, looking at the moving truck. “We’re moving into an apartment near Allentown. A one-bedroom. Greg... Greg filed for divorce yesterday. He said Vanessa’s legal troubles made his continued business presence impossible. He’s leaving the state.”
I said nothing.
“Your mother hasn't eaten in three days,” Richard continued, his eyes welling with thin, watery tears. “She just sits there. We... we don't have anything left, Emma. Marcus Kane took our entire savings account for Vanessa’s retainer. And now Vanessa is looking at seven to ten years in state prison. The prosecutor won't offer a plea below five.”
The silence stretched between us, heavy and cold as iron.
“Why didn't you tell us?” Richard whispered, looking at my uniform jacket hanging from the hook in the back seat. “All those years. You were a major, a lieutenant colonel... a full colonel. People respect you. Important people. Why did you let us treat you like... like you were nothing?”
I looked at my father—really looked at him—for the last time in my life.
“Because, Richard,” I said, my voice quiet and calm, “I wanted to see if you could love me without a reason.”
He flinched. The words struck him harder than any blow from a combatant could have.
“And you couldn't,” I added.
Ruby looked up from her coloring book, her dark eyes shifting toward the window. She saw her grandfather standing on the pavement.
She didn't wave. She didn't smile.
She simply reached out her small hand, found mine on the center console, and squeezed it tightly.
“Mommy,” Ruby said softly. “Can we go home now?”
“Yes, baby,” I told her. “We’re going home.”
I put the SUV into drive, stepped on the accelerator, and pulled away from the curb.
May you like
In the rearview mirror, Richard Carter stood alone on the edge of the empty street, watching the red taillights of my car disappear toward the highway, until the turn took us out of sight, and he was swallowed by the long, cold shadows of the trees.
***
