Chapter 6 - The Sister’s Ultimatum
By Thursday night, the cracks in the Vance family fortress weren't just showing—the walls were buckling.
I was folding laundry in our small living room while Aaron sat at the kitchen table reviewing the draft of the criminal complaint Greg had emailed over.
Then came the headlights.
Two bright beams cut across our blinds, sweeping through the front room before the engine of a heavy pickup truck died in our driveway. The door slammed with enough violence to shake our storm windows.
Aaron stood up immediately, moving toward the front hall. "Stay here."
"No," I said, setting the laundry basket down. "It’s Mallory."
It wasn't just Mallory. It was Mallory and Wayne.
Wayne was a broad, thick-necked contractor who wore his work boots to Sunday dinner and spent family barbecues talking about how taxes were theft. Mallory marched behind him, wearing an oversized pink sweater that hugged her barely-there baby bump, her face mottled with red blotches of fury.
She didn't knock; she banged her palm against the glass of our storm door.
Aaron opened the inner door, keeping the latched screen between us and them. "It's eight o'clock, Mallory. Theo's sleeping."
"I don't give a damn about Theo sleeping!" she shouted, her voice carrying down the quiet suburban street. "Tell your wife to come out here right now!"
I stepped around Aaron and looked through the mesh screen at my sister.
For months, Mallory had walked around like royalty, her pregnancy treated like the second coming by Mom and half the county. But right now, she looked haggard. Her eyes were rimmed with mascara streaks, and her lower lip was trembling with pure, unadulterated panic.
"What do you want, Mallory?" I asked.
"Call your lawyer," she demanded, her voice cracking. "Call him right now and tell him to drop this insane lawsuit!"
"It's not an insane lawsuit," Aaron said, his voice flat. "Your mother embezzled twenty-three thousand dollars meant for my son's heart surgery."
"That was five years ago!" Wayne barked, stepping up on our porch, his face inches from the screen. "That’s water under the bridge, man! Theo is fine! Look at him, he’s running around playing astronaut! You're trying to force Evelyn to sell the Freeman property!"
"That's her property," I said to Wayne, ignoring his chest-puffing. "She bought it with stolen money."
"It's not just her property!" Mallory shrieked, and there it was—the real wound, the real panic. "That was supposed to be *our* property! Mom promised Wayne and me that we could put a double-wide on that lot next spring so we wouldn't have to pay rent while the baby is little! She was signing the deed over to us for our baby gift!"
I stood there in the doorway, the cool night air filtering through the screen, and I actually laughed.
It wasn't a bitter laugh; it was an incredulous, astonished bark of laughter that echoed down the porch steps.
"She promised you the lake lot?" I asked.
"Yes!" Mallory cried, tears finally spilling over her cheeks. "Wayne already put a deposit down on the trailer! Three thousand dollars that we can't get back! If Mom has to sell that land to pay you off, we lose our deposit, and we’re stuck living in Wayne’s mother’s basement with a newborn!"
"So this isn't about Mom's health," I said. "This isn't about her blood pressure or Dad's stress."
"It's about our family!" Mallory screamed. "Why do you always have to destroy everything good in my life, Kendra? You got married first! You had the first grandchild! Mom spent two years obsessing over Theo's heart, and the second something good happens to me—the second I get a miracle baby—you pull this out of your ass to ruin my announcement, ruin my house, and send our mother to jail!"
"Mallory," Aaron said, his voice cold enough to cut glass. "Theo almost died on an operating table while your mother was negotiating the title on that dirt. Do you understand that? While my two-year-old was packed in ice to keep his brain from swelling, your mother was measuring curtains for a lake house."
"He *didn't* die!" Mallory yelled. "He's fine!"
The screen door opened.
It wasn't Aaron who opened it; it was me.
I stepped out onto the porch, closing the wooden door behind me so Theo wouldn't hear. I stood three inches from my sister, looking down into her tear-stained, self-obsessed face.
"Get off my porch," I said.
"Kendra, please—"
"Get off my porch, Mallory. Because if you say one more word about my son's survival being an inconvenience to your housing plans, I won't wait until Friday morning. I’ll call Greg right now, and I’ll tell him to release the audit documents to the local paper."
Wayne stepped forward, puffing his chest out toward Aaron. "You think you can threaten my wife—"
"I’m not threatening your wife, Wayne," I said, holding his eyes until he looked down. "I’m informing her. The deadline is nine o'clock tomorrow morning. If the twenty-five thousand dollars isn't in escrow, the lot gets seized by a civil lien, and Mom gets arrested at her church circle. Tell her that when you drive home."
Wayne grabbed Mallory’s arm. "Come on, Mal. Let's go. They're dead to us."
"You're a monster, Kendra!" Mallory sobbed as Wayne dragged her down the steps toward the truck. "You’re an evil, jealous monster! I hope you rot in that tiny little house!"
We stood on the porch in the dark, watching the red taillights of their truck disappear down the avenue.
Aaron reached over, took my hand, and laced his fingers through mine.
"Twelve hours left," he said quietly.
May you like
"Twelve hours," I agreed. "Let's go check on Theo."
***