Chapter 3 - The Counter-Attack
Evelyn Mercer did not panic easily. By the next morning, she had retained her own legal counsel—a high-priced, aggressive defense attorney named Richard Sterling, who specialized in bullying tenants and resolving family disputes with brute force.
"This is a bluff," Sterling told Evelyn, Natalie, and Frank during an emergency consultation in his high-rise office. "Claire is a paralegal. She knows how to draft scary-looking letters, but enforcing this? It would take months, even years, to get an ejectment order through the Multnomah County courts. By then, we can countersue her for harassment and force a settlement."
"Can she actually terminate my life estate?" Evelyn asked, her voice tight.
"It’s a gray area," Sterling said, leaning back. "The language in your late husband’s trust is unusually strict, yes. But judges hate evicting elderly women from their homes. We play the victim card. We say Claire was unstable, that she was creating a hostile environment, and that we changed the locks for our own safety. We claim the child was only left outside for a few minutes due to a 'miscommunication'."
"And the police report?" Frank asked nervously.
"No charges have been filed yet," Sterling dismissed. "It’s a civil matter. I’ll draft a response that will make her head spin. We’ll offer her a small cash settlement to waive her rights to the trust, and if she refuses, we threaten to ruin her career by filing an ethics complaint with the bar association for using her office's resources for personal gain."
Evelyn felt a surge of relief. "Yes. Do it. Make it hurt, Richard."
Two days later, Claire received Sterling’s response.
She was sitting in her new temporary apartment—a clean, bright two-bedroom overlooking the Willamette River. Lily was at the kitchen island, eating breakfast and working on her homework, looking much better, though she still jumped slightly whenever the door made a sound.
Claire read Sterling’s letter. It was full of venom, lies, and hollow threats. It accused Claire of being an unfit mother, claimed Lily was left outside for "less than fifteen minutes due to an unfortunate key malfunction," and threatened to contact the State Bar to have Claire fired.
Claire didn’t blink. She didn't get angry.
Instead, she picked up her phone and dialed a number.
"Marcus," she said when the senior partner of her firm answered. "They bit. They went with Sterling."
On the other end of the line, Marcus Vance let out a low chuckle. "Sterling always advises his clients to lie. He thinks courtrooms are won by who barks the loudest. Have you secured the security footage?"
"I did," Claire said, looking at a USB drive sitting on her desk. "Mrs. Dalton’s Ring camera has a perfect, unobstructed view of our front porch. It recorded all five hours. It shows Lily shivering. It shows Evelyn looking out the window twice and closing the blinds. And it shows the exact moment Evelyn opened the door and told her she didn’t live here anymore."
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"Excellent," Marcus said. "We don't file a standard ejectment. We file an emergency Ex Parte petition for temporary injunction and immediate possession based on waste and physical elder/child abuse. We’ll be in front of Judge Abernathy on Friday morning."
Claire smiled. "I’ll prepare the binders."
