Chapter 9 - The Video Leaks
“Mom!” Harper shrieked, pulling against the officer’s grip as she stumbled across the grass. “Mom, tell them! Tell them you told me to trace Dad’s name! They arrested me at the club! In front of the Montgomerys! In front of the entire tennis committee!”
Mom didn't run to embrace her daughter.
Instead, Mom did what she had done her entire life whenever a storm broke overhead: she threw the person standing closest to her straight into the lightning.
“You traced his name?” Mom gasped, putting her hands to her cheeks in manufactured horror. “Harper! How could you?! I thought your father signed that check before he went into the ICU! You told me Arthur gave you that money!”
Harper stopped dead in her tracks.
The look on my sister’s face was almost pitiful. It was the realization of a child who had finally discovered that the mother who favored her had only ever loved herself.
“You... you liar!” Harper screamed, lunging toward the porch, her handcuffed fists swinging wildly through the air. “You gave me the light box! You handed me his old passport! You told me Becca was going to steal everything and that we had to empty the account before the lawyer opened the trust!”
“Get this hysterical woman away from me!” Mom yelled, retreating behind Deputy Miller. “Officer, she’s out of her mind! I had nothing to do with this! Harper has always had a gambling problem! Greg has debts all over the state! She manipulated me!”
“You evil old witch!” Harper shrieked, bursting into violent, uncontrollable sobs as the patrol officer held her back. “I ruined my life for you! Greg is going to prison, and it’s all your fault!”
Deputy Miller turned to the patrol officer. “Put her in the back of the cruiser, Tom. We’re taking both statements down at the station.”
As they led Harper away, Miles ran out from the front door of the house, crying hysterically. “Mommy! Mommy!”
Uncle Dan and Aunt Clara, who had been hiding inside the foyer watching through the sidelight windows, quickly stepped out onto the porch. Dan didn't even look at Mom. He looked directly at me, his eyes pleading for mercy, terrified of the mechanic’s lien I had threatened to place on his home.
“Rebecca,” Dan whispered, his voice trembling. “Clara and I will take Miles for the night. We’ll watch him. You don't have to worry about the boy.”
“Make sure you teach him not to throw drinks on people who pay for his clothes, Dan,” I said quietly.
Dan winced as if I had struck him with a hammer. “Yes. Yes, of course, Becca. We’re... we’re so sorry about earlier. Truly.”
Mom stood at the top of the porch steps, entirely abandoned.
Her sister Clara ignored her. Her brother-in-law Dan wouldn't meet her eyes. Her favorite daughter was sitting in the back of a police cruiser in handcuffs, screaming obscenities through the barred window. And her grandson was being led away by relatives who were terrified of my legal authority.
Mom looked down at me, her chest heaving.
“You think you’ve won, don't you?” she hissed, her voice dropping into a venomous whisper that only Caleb, Deputy Miller, and I could hear. “You think because you’ve humiliated us in front of the neighbors you’re going to walk away with Arthur’s kingdom?”
“I don't care about a kingdom, Mom,” I said, looking her straight in the eyes. “I care about the promise I made to Dad. You spent forty years treating him like an ATM and treating me like garbage. It ends today.”
“I’ll contest it,” Mom threatened, her fingernails digging into the fabric of her cardigan. “I’ll hire the best trial attorney in Ohio. I’ll drag your name through every newspaper from here to Columbus. I’ll tell the world you killed your father!”
Deputy Miller turned around, his patience completely exhausted.
“Mrs. Whitaker, I strongly advise you to close your mouth and go inside your house. If you utter one more slanderous accusation against this young woman, I will personally cite you for filing a false police report and disorderly conduct. Go inside. Now.”
Mom gasped, looked at the crowd of neighbors still watching from the street, and realized there was no audience left to applaud her performance.
She turned, walked into the cavernous foyer of the colonial house, and slammed the heavy oak door shut.
May you like
The sound echoed through the neighborhood like the closing of a tomb.
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