Chapter 5 - The Desperate Strike
At six o'clock that evening, my front door was nearly rattled off its hinges.
I was in the kitchen slicing peaches for preserves. I didn't rush. I washed my hands, dried them on a linen towel, and walked into the foyer.
Through the glass panes of the door, Derek was visibly unravelling. His tie was loosened, his hair was disheveled, and his face was flushed bright red. Beside him, Brianna looked like a cornered animal, her mascara smudged, her eyes blazing with raw, venomous fury.
I opened the front door, leaving the heavy chain bolted.
"Open the damn door, Mom!" Derek screamed. It was the first time in his life he had ever raised his voice to me.
"Lower your voice, Derek. You are on my porch, in my neighborhood, and I will not tolerate profanity."
"Open the door!" Brianna shrieked, pushing past Derek’s shoulder. "You orchestrated that! You deliberately sent them to the club! You humiliated me in front of the entire board!"
"You orchestrated that yourself, Brianna, by driving an automobile that didn't belong to you for three weeks after the contract ended. The bank came for their property."
"Let us in, Mom," Derek pleaded, his voice breaking into a ragged sob. "Please. We have a letter from the bank. We need to talk to you. The house... they’re putting a freeze on our mortgage account."
I looked at Derek. Really looked at him. The boyish charm was gone, replaced by the sunken, exhausted features of a man who had spent four years selling his soul to finance an illusion, only to find the bill coming due.
I unhooked the chain and swung the door open. "Come into the living room. Keep your voices down."
They stepped inside. Brianna didn't sit. She paced the length of my Persian rug, her fingers clutching a manila envelope.
"You put a lien on our house," she hissed, turning on me. "Our mortgage broker called Derek this afternoon. We were trying to pull out a second mortgage to pay off our unsecured cards, and the title search came back with a seventy-five-thousand-dollar cloud on the deed from Thomas Sterling’s office. How dare you? That house is ours!"
"That house was purchased with seventy-five thousand dollars of Arthur's life insurance money," I replied, sitting in my wingback armchair. "Money that was supposed to secure my retirement. Derek promised in writing it would be returned. When I saw the path you were dragging him down, I realized that if I didn't secure that debt, you would bleed the equity dry and leave him with nothing."
"It was a gift!" Brianna shouted. "Every mother helps her son! You gave it to us!"
"The memo line on the certified draft says otherwise. The texts Derek sent say otherwise. The judge will agree with the paper trail."
Derek suddenly dropped to his knees in front of my chair. He reached out, trying to take my hands, but I kept them folded in my lap.
"Mom," he wept, tears streaming down his cheeks. "You don't understand. If that lien stays, the bank won't approve the home equity line. We have sixty thousand dollars in credit card debt. The HOA has filed for a foreclosure auction on the property because the late dues triggered a clause in the covenant. If you don't take the lien off, we lose the house. We lose everything."
"Then you sell the house," I said simply.
Brianna let out a strangled laugh. "Sell it? And go where? Into some trashy apartment? Do you know who my family is? Do you know what people would say?"
"Your family sat at your Easter table, Brianna," I said, turning my gaze fully onto her. "Your father is an executive at a regional logistics firm. Your sisters drive matching Range Rovers. If your lifestyle is in jeopardy, why haven't you asked them for seventy-five thousand dollars?"
Brianna’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her skin turned an ash-gray color.
"I know why," I continued softly. "Because your family doesn't give you money. They take it from you, don't they? Those credit card charges I pulled—three flights to Cabo San Lucas. Derek was working in Chicago that weekend. You flew your sisters to Mexico on my credit card. The luggage? A graduation gift for your niece. You’ve been using Derek to prop up your image of wealth for your own family, and Derek used me to pay for it."
Derek turned his head slowly toward his wife. "What? What is she talking about?"
"She's lying!" Brianna screamed. "She's an old woman trying to tear us apart!"
"I have the itemized billing statements from the airline, Derek," I said, pointing toward the desk. "The passenger names are Chloe Vance and Megan Vance. Your wife charged four thousand six hundred dollars to my account for their first-class tickets."
Derek stood up. He staggered back a step, looking at Brianna as if he were seeing a stranger wearing his wife's clothes.
"You told me your father paid for that trip," Derek whispered. "You told me your family covered it."
"Derek, shut up! Don't listen to her!"
"You lied to me?" Derek’s voice cracked in a terrifying way. "I've been working eighty hours a week at the firm. I haven't slept more than four hours a night in two years trying to keep up with the mortgage, and you were putting your family’s vacations on my mother’s cards?"
"Your mother is a bitter, lonely old woman who wanted to control you!" Brianna shrieked, her facade completely shattering. "She was never good enough for our circle! She smells like old books and cheap lavender! She embarrassed me every time she opened her mouth! She deserved to have that chair pulled out! She never belonged at that table!"
The room went dead silent.
The echo of her words hung in the air like poison.
Derek didn't shout. He didn't cry anymore. He just stared at her. The cowardice that had kept his eyes pinned to his plate on Easter Sunday seemed to burn away under the unbearable heat of reality.
"Get out," Derek said.
Brianna blinked. "What?"
"Get out of my mother’s house," Derek said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. "And get out of my car. Wait on the sidewalk. I’m calling you a cab."
"Derek, you can't be serious—"
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"Get out!" he roared, pointing toward the door.
Brianna grabbed her purse, her lips trembling with rage and humiliation, and slammed the front door behind her.
