Chapter 7 - The Auction
Two months after the trial. July 2027.
The summer sun shone bright and golden over the manicured gardens of the Oak Park estate property that had once belonged to Lorraine Vance.
A large yellow sign stood on the front lawn: PUBLIC SHERIFF'S AUCTION – COURT ORDERED LIQUIDATION.
Dozens of local residents, antique dealers, and curious neighbors gathered in the driveway as an auctioneer stood on a wooden crate, calling out bids for the personal belongings, furniture, and silver that had been seized from Lorraine’s apartment to satisfy her civil fraud judgment.
I stood near the back of the crowd, wearing a light linen dress and sunglasses, holding a cold cup of iced tea.
Beside me stood Sarah, my executive assistant, who was holding a clipboard and taking notes on the auction proceeds.
"The dining room set just went for four thousand dollars," Sarah whispered, checking off an item on her list. "And her mother's silver tea set fetched another twelve hundred."
"Send all proceeds directly to the restitution escrow account managed by Marcus," I said softly.
Across the driveway, standing near the sidewalk behind a police barricade, stood Lorraine.
She was wearing a faded cotton housecoat and worn sneakers, holding a plastic shopping bag containing her few permitted personal items. She was forbidden from entering the property boundary under the civil enforcement order, but she stood there anyway, watching strangers buy her life piece by piece.
She saw me standing near the garden rosebushes.
She limped along the edge of the fence line until she was standing ten feet from where I stood, her fingers clutching the chain-link barrier like a prisoner in a yard.
"You must be very proud of yourself," Lorraine rasped, her voice trembling with a mixture of bitter hatred and profound exhaustion. "You took my home. You took my son. You took everything I built over sixty years."
I took a slow sip of my tea, turned toward her, and lowered my sunglasses slightly.
"I didn't take anything from you, Lorraine," I said, my voice calm and even against the noisy backdrop of the auctioneer’s gavel. "You gambled your life away on a delusion. You raised a son who thought he could hit women and steal from orphans, and you smiled while he did it."
"He was my son!" she cried out, tears leaking down her wrinkled cheeks. "A mother protects her child!"
"A real mother teaches her child accountability," I replied. "You taught him entitlement. And now you both get to pay the bill."
Lorraine opened her mouth to spit another venomous curse, but two security guards stepped up beside her, gently taking her arm and guiding her back toward the public sidewalk.
"Time to move along, ma'am," the guard said firm. "You're blocking the pedestrian walkway."
I watched her shuffle down the street, her plastic bag dragging against the hot concrete, her small, stooped figure shrinking until she vanished around the corner of Wacker Boulevard.
I turned back to the auction.
The auctioneer was currently holding up a heavy, carved wooden dining room bowl—the very bowl that Lorraine had brought to my condo on that cold November morning to serve her stew.
"Do I have fifty dollars for this handmade mahogany bowl?" the auctioneer called out. "Fifty? Do I hear twenty? Anyone?"
Nobody raised a hand. The crowd remained silent.
May you like
"Unsold," the auctioneer declared, tossing the bowl carelessly into a wooden discard box behind him. "Moving on to item forty-two: a collection of crystal stemware..."
I smiled softly, took a breath of the warm summer air, and walked back toward my waiting car.
