Chapter 4 - The House with No Soul
Back at 44 Beacon Street, reality was settling in like a deep, bone-chilling frost.
It was mid-October, and a classic New England nor’easter had rolled into the city, dropping the temperature to a biting thirty-eight degrees with driving rain against the tall, antique windowpanes.
Evan sat on the floor of what used to be the library. He had pulled an old, moth-eaten wool blanket from the attic over his shoulders. His back ached viciously from sleeping on the bare pine floorboards of the primary bedroom. Every joint felt bruised.
The house was freezing.
He stood up, groaning, and walked down the echoing corridor to the smart thermostat mounted on the hallway wall. The digital screen was dead. Completely black.
“What the hell?” he muttered, tapping the screen aggressively. Nothing.
He pulled out his phone—his personal phone, which was now burning through an expensive emergency data roaming plan because the home Wi-Fi had been disconnected at 7:00 AM.
He dialed the municipal gas company.
“Boston Gas, how can I direct your call?”
“Yes, my heating system isn’t turning on,” Evan said, trying to maintain his authoritative tone. “The digital controls are dead. I need a technician out here immediately to 44 Beacon Street.”
The representative typed for a moment. “I see the address, sir. However, the commercial smart-climate lease and the high-efficiency maintenance contract for that address were terminated at midnight by the account holder, Natalie Moreau.”
Evan froze. “What do you mean terminated? The furnace is in *my* basement!”
“The furnace is original to the property, sir, but the multi-zone smart controller, the electric heat-pump boosters, and the automated fuel-feed system were leased equipment under Mrs. Carter’s commercial enterprise account. She canceled the service and had the remote control nodes deactivated this morning. To restore standard baseline service to the legacy radiators, you will need to schedule a manual inspection and pay a reactivation deposit of fourteen hundred dollars.”
“Fourteen hundred dollars? I’m an existing resident!”
“The account holder on file has closed her account. You are considered a new applicant, Mr. Carter. Our earliest available manual inspection slot is next Thursday.”
“Next Thursday? It’s forty degrees in here right now!” Evan screamed.
“I apologize for the inconvenience, sir. Would you like to schedule for Thursday?”
Evan slammed the phone down without answering.
He stormed into the kitchen. His mother was sitting on an overturned plastic laundry basket she had dragged down from the laundry room, shivering inside her mink coat, sipping lukewarm tap water from a paper bathroom cup.
“Evan,” Linda whimpered, her voice trembling with cold and misery. “My fingers are blue. We cannot stay here like this. Why haven’t you turned on the heat?”
“Because she canceled the system, Mom!” Evan shouted, pacing the bare kitchen floor. “She canceled the heat controls! She canceled the Wi-Fi! She took the refrigerator! She took the coffee maker! I can’t even make a cup of instant coffee because she took the electric kettle!”
“Then go to the bank!” Linda snapped, her aristocratic veneer cracking into ugly desperation. “Go to the bank, withdraw ten thousand dollars, go to a department store, and buy us beds! Buy us heaters! Call a caterer! We are Carters, Evan! We do not live like refugees in our own ancestral home!”
Evan stopped pacing. He stared at his mother, his jaw working silently.
“I can’t,” he whispered.
Linda blinked. “What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I don’t have ten thousand dollars, Mom.”
The silence that followed was heavy and hollow.
“What are you talking about?” Linda demanded. “You are a senior vice president at Carter & Sterling Wealth! You make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year!”
“My base salary is one hundred and twenty thousand!” Evan confessed, his voice breaking under the weight of the truth. “The rest is performance bonus based on fund recruitment! And my fund has underperformed for three consecutive quarters! I haven’t hit a bonus threshold since 2022!”
Linda rose from the laundry basket, her eyes wide with horror. “Then how have we been paying for this? How did you pay for the renovations? How did you pay for my summer rental in Nantucket? How did you pay for your brother’s business loan?”
“Natalie paid for it!” Evan shouted, his hands flying to his head, pulling at his hair. “Natalie paid for the Nantucket house! Natalie paid off Julian’s dry-cleaning startup debts so he wouldn't go to jail! Natalie paid the property taxes! Natalie paid for the groceries, the utilities, the dinners, the cars, the maintenance! I paid the baseline mortgage on the house and my country club membership to keep up appearances, and Natalie covered *everything else*!”
Linda looked as though she had been struck across the face with a lead pipe. She stumbled back against the bare kitchen counter, staring at her son as if seeing him for the first time.
“She… she funded us?” Linda whispered.
“Yes!” Evan choked out. “And you told her she was cheap! You told her she didn't know how to keep a house! You threw her mother’s bowl into the trash right in front of her! I told her to get out because I thought she was bluffing! I thought she would never leave me! I’m an executive! I have the Carter name!”
“You idiot,” Linda hissed, the color draining from her lips. “You utter, reckless idiot.”
Before Evan could reply, the heavy brass knocker on the front door slammed against the wood.
*Thump. Thump. Thump.*
Evan’s heart leapt into his throat. “It’s her. She’s come back. She realized she went too far.”
He practically sprinted down the hallway, skidding on his socked feet across the hardwood, and yanked the heavy front door open.
“Natalie, look, I’m sorry—”
The words died in his throat.
Standing on the stoop, rain dripping from the brim of a dark umbrella, was not Natalie. It was a tall, severe-looking man in a sharply tailored charcoal overcoat, holding a thick leather briefcase. Beside him stood a uniformed Suffolk County Sheriff's deputy.
“Evan Carter?” the man asked.
“Yes?”
The deputy stepped forward and thrust a thick, blue-backed legal packet directly against Evan’s chest.
“You have been served, Mr. Carter. Suffolk County Probate and Family Court. Civil Action Number 24-P-8891.”
Evan looked down at the packet, his hands trembling. The bold black lettering at the top of the first page seemed to sear itself into his retinas:
**PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE**
**PLAINTIFF: NATALIE MOREAU CARTER**
**DEFENDANT: EVAN BEATRICE CARTER**
**EMERGENCY MOTION FOR EQUITABLE LIEN & LIS PENDENS**
The man with the umbrella tipped his hat slightly. “I’m Julian Vance. My client has extended an invitation for an emergency settlement conference tomorrow morning at ten o'clock at my offices. I strongly advise you to bring competent legal counsel, Mr. Carter. Because if you don’t, tomorrow is the day you lose this house forever.”
May you like
Julian turned and walked calmly down the granite steps into the rain, leaving Evan standing in the open doorway, clutching the papers as the freezing wind whipped through his empty, bankrupt home.
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