Chapter 2 - The Cracks in the Concrete
Chad didn’t step up to the permit counter. Instead, he lingered by the public brochure rack near the double glass exit, shifting his weight from one boot to the other like a teenager waiting outside a principal’s office.
I looked at Bart. “Give me five minutes.”
“I’ll have security keep an eye on the lobby monitor,” Bart muttered, his hand hovering over the desk phone. “If he raises his voice once, Crystal, he’s out on the curb.”
I walked through the side security door, the heavy latch clicking behind me with finality.
Chad flinched when the latch snapped. When he looked up and saw me walking toward him, he took half a step backward, toward the parking lot, as if his first instinct was to run.
“Crystal,” he said, his voice cracked and raspy. He smelled of cheap gas-station coffee and stale tobacco. “I didn't know you’d be at the front desk.”
“This is where I work, Chad. This is where I’ve worked for nine years.” I stopped six feet away from him, keeping my hands resting calmly inside the pockets of my slacks. “What are you doing here?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, his knuckles raw and red from mechanic work. “Danielle told me you’d be off today. She said you took personal leave because of... because of what happened yesterday.”
“I don’t run away from my own life because my family threw a tantrum on my lawn,” I said evenly. “Did you come here to check on the permit you uploaded at midnight?”
Chad froze. The color drained from his face so rapidly that for a second I thought his knees might buckle.
“I... I didn't want to upload that,” he stammered, dropping his voice to an urgent whisper as an elderly couple walked past toward the utility payment window. “Crystal, I swear on my boys’ lives, I told them it was wrong. I told Arlin it wasn't right.”
“And yet your name is on the digital transmission,” I replied, my eyes locked on his face. “You uploaded a forged power of attorney from 2018 to the city where I earn my living. Do you have any idea what that is, Chad? That’s not a family dispute over Sunday dinner. That is a class-three municipal fraud felony.”
Chad’s breath hitched. He reached out as if to touch my arm, but thought better of it when he saw the look in my eyes. His hand dropped limply to his side.
“She took my phone,” he whispered, his eyes welling with sudden, humiliating tears. “Danielle had my phone while I was outside packing the truck. Arlin came over to our rental at eight last night. He was screaming so loud the neighbors called our landlord. He told Danielle that if she didn't get that permit approved by noon today, he was washing his hands of us. He said he wasn't going to look like a fool in front of Darren Petway.”
“So you let her commit a crime using your name?”
“I didn't know she did it until five this morning!” Chad’s voice cracked, rising slightly before he caught himself and clamped his mouth shut. He looked around frantically, but the lobby was quiet. “Crystal, please. You have to listen to me. Our landlord didn't just decide to sell. We got an eviction notice three weeks ago. We have seven days left. Seven days, Crystal.”
I stared at him. “Danielle told the entire family you had sixty days.”
“She lied!” Chad choked out, burying his face in his hands for a brief, shaking second. “She didn't pay the rent in January or February. She told me she was putting it in the savings account for a down payment on a place of our own. When the sheriff taped the five-day notice to our door, that was the first time I knew we were behind. She spent that money, Crystal. She spent it on clothes, on custom monogrammed baseball bags for the boys, on furniture we couldn't afford from that showroom in north OKC.”
The pieces of the puzzle began clicking together with sickening clarity.
The sudden urgency. The aggressive insistence that the workshop be converted immediately. The paint swatches at Sunday dinner three weeks ago.
It wasn't an organic transition. It was an emergency escape hatch. Danielle was facing complete financial exposure, and Arlin had decided that my workshop was the cheapest way to bail her out without digging into his own retirement accounts.
“Where is Arlin now?” I asked.
Chad swallowed hard. “He’s at a lawyer’s office on Boulevard. He took the gift letter you gave him yesterday to Thomas Finch.”
Thomas Finch was an infamous name around Edmond and Guthrie. He was an aging, combative attorney who specialized in messy small-town disputes, known for filing frivolous, scorched-earth motions designed to bleed people dry in legal fees until they settled out of court.
“Arlin told Finch you stole fifteen thousand dollars from him under the guise of buying a family compound,” Chad said, his voice trembling. “He’s preparing an emergency petition for an injunction. He’s trying to claim that your workshop is part of an equitable partnership, and he’s asking for a restraining order to keep Aaron from touching the building until the court decides who owns it.”
A cold laugh nearly escaped my throat. “An equitable partnership? On a deed recorded in my name with a federally standardized gift letter filed six years ago?”
“Finch told him it doesn't matter if he wins in the end,” Chad said quietly. “He said if he files the *lis pendens* against your deed, you can’t refinance, you can’t sell, and the city won’t let you do any permitted work on your own property while the title is clouded. Arlin smiled when Finch said that. He looked at Danielle and said, ‘Let’s see how independent Crystal feels when her title is tied up for eighteen months.’”
I looked at my brother-in-law. For six years, I had watched Chad sit passively at my mother’s dining table, letting my sister cut him off mid-sentence, letting my father belittle his work as a diesel technician, silently absorbing the toxicity of the Eubanks household just to keep the peace.
“Why are you telling me this, Chad?” I asked. “If Danielle finds out you came here, she’ll tear you apart.”
Chad looked down at his cracked work boots. A single tear escaped his eyelash and tracked through the dust on his cheek.
“Because yesterday... when Bryce and Braden pushed Callie into that ditch... I saw the look on my boys’ faces,” he said, his voice breaking completely. “They weren't sorry. They were laughing. They looked at Callie like she was dirt under their shoes, Crystal. And then I looked at Danielle, and she was smiling. A tiny little smile, like she was proud of them for taking what was theirs.”
He wiped his face with the back of his rough sleeve.
“I grew up with a father who bullied everybody in town, Crystal. I spent thirty years trying not to become him. And yesterday, sitting at your table, watching my own sons push a six-year-old girl into the mud while Arlin cheered them on... I realized I’m turning my boys into monsters. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t care about the workshop. I just want my kids to grow up decent.”
I stood very still. The anger that had been simmering in my veins since Easter morning didn't disappear, but it focused into something sharp and cold.
“If you mean that, Chad, you need to do something for me right now.”
He looked up, desperate. “Anything.”
“You walk back out to your truck. You take your phone. You write an email to the City of Edmond Planning Department stating that you did not authorize the upload of that permit application, that the document attached was altered without the property owner's consent, and that you request the immediate withdrawal of the filing.”
Chad’s chest rose and fell sharply. “Arlin will know it was me.”
“Arlin already thinks he owns you,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “He thinks he owns Danielle, he thinks he owns me, and he thinks he can buy my daughter’s dignity for fifteen thousand dollars he gave away six years ago. It’s time you decide whether you work for Arlin Eubanks or whether you’re the father of your sons.”
Chad closed his eyes for a long, agonizing five seconds.
When he opened them, the defeat in his posture had shifted into something resembling resolve.
May you like
“Give me the email address,” he said.
***