Chapter 7 - The Desperate Play
The reaction from the Holloway family was swift, ugly, and frantic.
By Tuesday afternoon, the legal pressure had broken their unified front. Melissa, terrified of being pulled into a fraud investigation or losing her own assets, called Megan from a blocked number, sobbing so hard she could barely choke out the words.
"Megan, please, I didn't know about the insurance money! I swear I didn't!" Melissa wailed. "Mom told us it was just a regular bank account! Darren is going crazy in the county jail, he’s getting into fights, and the bail is set at ten thousand dollars cash because of the utility damage! We don't have it! If you don't drop the fraud claim, the bank is going to freeze Mom’s house!"
"Melissa," Megan said, her voice steady and calm as ice. "Your mother stole my mother’s legacy. She let me live in a basement while Darren drove a sixty-thousand-dollar truck paid for by my inheritance. Where was this concern for family when I was paying your daycare bills?"
"We were wrong!" Melissa screamed. "Okay? We were wrong! But you can't just ruin our lives! We’re your family!"
"You were my landlords," Megan corrected her. "And bad ones at that. Talk to Victoria Vance. Do not call this number again."
An hour later, Aunt Ruth herself tried a different tactic. She didn't call. She drove to Briar Ridge herself, unaccompanied, and parked her car outside the iron gate.
Megan watched her through the security camera feed. Ruth looked smaller now. The fur-trimmed coat looked tacky against the rugged mountain landscape, and her face was pale, lined with a sudden, sharp age that comes from the realization that the game is completely up.
Ruth pressed the call box button.
Megan answered through her tablet. "Ruth. You are violating the civil stay-away order my lawyer sent you yesterday."
"Megan, just let me up the road," Ruth pleaded, her voice cracking. She didn't look at the camera; she looked down at her polished shoes in the gravel. "Just for five minutes. I’m an old woman, Megan. My heart can't take this. I made mistakes. Your mother... your mother was always the favorite, and when she passed, I was so bitter about the house, about everything... I took it out on you. It wasn't right."
Megan listened to the words. A year ago, this apology would have made her cry. It would have made her open the gate, pour a cup of tea, and hand over her checkbook out of pure, starved desire for maternal love.
But Megan looked past the screen, out the window toward the high peaks. She remembered the cold nights in the basement with the furnace coughing soot onto her drawings. She remembered Darren laughing as he slammed the door in her face.
"It’s a good script, Ruth," Megan said quietly through the speaker. "But you’re not sorry you did it. You’re just sorry I found the bank statements. You have forty-eight hours to sign the settlement Victoria Vance sent your lawyer. If it’s not signed by tomorrow at five, the district attorney gets the forged signature documents from the estate liquidation."
Ruth looked up at the camera lens then, her eyes narrowing into two slits of pure, venomous hatred. The pathetic, frail old woman vanished in an instant.
"You are a cold, ungrateful little bitch," Ruth spat into the microphone, her voice vibrating with malice. "Your mother would be ashamed of what you’ve become."
"My mother died protecting me, Ruth," Megan said softly. "And today, I’m doing the same."
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She disconnected the call box.
On the screen, she watched Ruth slam her hand against the iron bars one last time before turning around, climbing into her car, and speeding down the mountain, her tires kicking up a cloud of angry white dust.
