Chapter 9 - The Ghost of Joliet
Two years later.
The city of Joliet, Illinois, sat quiet under a heavy grey winter sky.
In a small, greasy auto repair shop near the railway tracks, Brendan Morrison stood over the smoking engine bay of a ten-year-old pickup truck, his hands covered in dark black oil, a heavy iron wrench clasped in his calloused fingers.
He was thirty-seven years old, but he looked fifty.
He worked sixty hours a week for twelve dollars an hour—just enough to pay the rent on his tiny one-bedroom basement apartment and send a two-hundred-dollar money order every month to the state nursing facility where his mother lived in a tiny room overlooking a brick wall.
Jessica had moved to Florida six months earlier with a nightclub promoter, leaving behind three months of unpaid rent that Brendan was still slowly paying off.
The radio on the workbench behind him buzzed with the afternoon local news broadcast.
“And in local business news, the Vantage Apex Foundation celebrated the opening of its flagship pediatric hospital in downtown Chicago today...”
Brendan’s hands froze on the wrench.
He slowly turned his head toward the small transistor radio sitting beside an oil-stained shop rag.
“Chairwoman Cassidy Vance was joined by her two-year-old daughter, Clara, as well as city leaders, to cut the ribbon on the three-hundred-million-dollar medical facility...”
The news anchor’s voice was accompanied by the sound of a live reporter speaking from the hospital courtyard.
“Miss Vance delivered a brief address, emphasizing that true wealth is measured not by corporate holdings, but by the safety and happiness of the next generation...”
Brendan dropped his wrench onto the concrete floor with a heavy, hollow CLANG.
He walked slowly over to the small, grimy window of the auto shop, looking out at the cold, empty street.
He remembered the small, cramped kitchen in their first apartment five years ago. He remembered how Cassidy used to sit at the table in her simple cotton sweater, laughing as she chopped vegetables for their dinner, looking at him with eyes full of absolute, unconditional devotion.
He remembered how she used to hold his hand when he was stressed about his mid-level job, telling him that as long as they had each other, they had everything they needed.
And he remembered the night he let his mother pour a bucket of filthy water over her head, and how he had thrown his head back and laughed.
A tear spilled down his oil-stained cheek, cutting a clean, white line through the grease on his face.
He touched his cold, empty fingers.
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He had held the world in his hands. He had held a forty-billion-dollar empire, a beautiful, brilliant wife, and a precious daughter.
And he had traded it all for a moment of arrogant vanity in his mother’s dining room.
