Chapter 9 - The Reckoning and Legal Eviction
The silence that settled over the house after the Pembertons departed was heavier than a collapsed lung.
Ainsley remained on the floor, curled into a fetal ball on the antique Persian rug, weeping with an ugly, animalistic howl that tore at the quiet of the room. Her ivory dress was twisted, her hairpins scattered across the floorboards.
My mother sat frozen in her armchair, staring at the empty doorway with blank, unseeing eyes, looking like a marionette whose strings had been severed with a single slice.
My father slowly walked over to the sideboard. He poured three inches of scotch into a water glass with a hand that rattled against the crystal decanter. He drank it down in two long, desperate swallows, then wiped his mouth with the back of his trembling hand.
"Are you happy now, Wesley?" he whispered, his voice cracked and hollow. "You destroyed your sister's life. You humiliated your mother. You destroyed this family. Are you proud of yourself?"
I walked over to the desk, picked up the remaining copies of Marcus Vance’s legal filings, and laid them neatly on the low table in front of my mother.
"No, Dad," I said, looking him dead in the eye. "I didn't destroy this family. Your greed destroyed it. Your cowardice destroyed it. And Ainsley’s entitlement destroyed it."
I tapped the legal documents.
"This is an official Complaint for Partition by Sale," I stated, my clinical voice returning, precise and unyielding. "Marcus Vance filed the emergency electronic notice with the Buncombe County Clerk of Court two hours ago. The Lis Pendens is officially attached to this deed."
Mom’s head jerked up. "Partition? What does that mean?"
"It means," I said, "that as a fifty-percent tenant-in-common who has paid the entire mortgage, property taxes, and capital improvements for forty-eight months, I am legally petitioning the court to force the immediate sale of 424 Kimberly Avenue on the open market."
"No!" Mom shrieked, springing from her chair with sudden, desperate energy. "You can't sell this house! This is our home! We have our social circle here! Our friends! Everything we’ve built for twenty years!"
"You haven't built anything, Eleanor," I said, meeting her hysterical gaze without blinking. "I built this. Mara’s life insurance built this. And I am taking it back."
"We’ll fight you!" Dad yelled, slamming his scotch glass onto the sideboard with enough force to crack the base. "We have rights! We’re your parents! No judge in North Carolina is going to throw an elderly couple out onto the street at the request of their ungrateful son!"
"Every judge in North Carolina will," I countered coldly. "Under Chapter 46A, partition by sale is a matter of absolute statutory right for a co-tenant when the property cannot be physically partitioned. And when Marcus presents this recording to the judge—when the court hears you and Ainsley conspiring to execute a fraudulent quitclaim deed using a compromised notary—you won't just lose the house, Dad. You’ll be lucky if the District Attorney doesn't indict you for attempted mortgage fraud."
Dad’s mouth snapped shut. He looked at the floor, his shoulders slumping completely. The fight was gone. The bluster was gone. All that remained was a bankrupt, broken old man who had finally run out of other people’s money.
"You have two options," I said, holding up two fingers.
"Option one: You buy out my fifty-percent equity, plus reimbursement for the seventy-six thousand dollars of Mara’s money and the sixty-seven thousand dollars of mortgage payments I made on your behalf. That comes to exactly two hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars, payable in certified funds within thirty days."
"We don't have that kind of money!" Mom wailed, her hands clutching her cheeks. "You know we don't have that! Where are we supposed to get three hundred thousand dollars?!"
"Then you take option two," I continued without missing a beat. "You sign the voluntary listing agreement Marcus has drafted with Beverly-Hanks Realtors by Friday morning. The house goes on the market for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When it sells, the bank mortgage is satisfied first. Then, my initial seventy-six thousand is returned to Luna’s trust account. Then, I receive fifty percent of the remaining net proceeds. Whatever crumbs are left after my legal fees and capital reimbursements are satisfied... you and Dad can split."
"And where are we supposed to live?" Ainsley choked out, sitting up on the rug, her mascara running in black rivers down her blotched cheeks. "Where am I supposed to go? Brooks left me! I don't have a job! I don't have anything!"
I looked down at my sister. For the first time in my life, I felt absolutely nothing for her. No anger. No pity. No residual brotherly instinct to fix her mistakes.
She was simply a stranger who shared my genetic code and had tried to rob my child.
"You have a college degree that I paid for, Ainsley," I said quietly. "I suggest you update your resume and find an apartment with roommates. Just like every other twenty-six-year-old in this country."
I picked up my coat from the foyer bench and pulled it on.
"You have until Friday at five o'clock to sign the listing agreement," I said from the archway. "If Marcus doesn't have the signed contract in his office by then, the partition complaint is served by the sheriff on Monday morning. And the audio recording will be delivered directly to the Buncombe County District Attorney’s white-collar crime division."
I turned toward the front door.
"Wesley!" Dad called out, his voice cracked with a pathetic, desperate whimper. "Wesley... please. It’s Christmas. How can you walk out on your family on Christmas night?"
I stopped with my hand on the brass door knob.
I looked back over my shoulder at the three of them: my father clinging to his scotch, my mother staring at her Persian rugs, and my sister sobbing on the floor.
"My family isn't in this room," I said. "My family is at home, waiting for me."
I opened the door, stepped out into the crisp, clean mountain night, and pulled the door shut behind me.
May you like
The latch clicked. And this time, it sounded like freedom.
***