Chapter 7 - The Aftermath on Elm Street
By Saturday afternoon, word of my father walking out on my mother had spread through Elm Street like wildfire.
Aunt Linda called me three times—calls I promptly sent straight to voicemail. According to a text message preview from a sympathetic cousin who still spoke to me, my mother was currently sitting on her front porch surrounded by cardboard boxes, screaming at passing mail carriers and demanding to know why the world had suddenly decided to collapse around her.
Chloe tried to intercept me on my way to grab coffee on Sunday morning.
She was waiting outside my apartment building, shivering in a light jacket, looking like a ghost of her former golden-girl self. Her wedding had been indefinitely postponed—Julian’s family, sensing the impending financial and social nosedive of the Blackwood name, had conveniently backed out of the alliance.
"Elena! Please!" Chloe cried, rushing toward me as I stepped out onto the sidewalk. "You have to talk to Dad. He won't answer his phone. Mom is losing her mind—she hasn't eaten in three days, and the bank is threatening to repossess her car!"
I stopped, adjusting the strap of my handbag, and looked down at my sister. The white dress was gone, replaced by sweatpants and unwashed hair. The illusion was completely shattered.
"Dad is an adult, Chloe. He can make his own choices," I said evenly. "And Mom has a six-hundred-thousand-dollar asset she can sell, except for one tiny detail."
Chloe’s eyes widened in sudden, horrifying comprehension. "What... what detail?"
"She doesn't own the house anymore," I said, a cool, sweet smile touching my lips. "Dad signed the deed over to me on Friday night. Free and clear."
Chloe staggered backward as if I had punched her in the chest. "You... you took the house? You stole our home?"
"I didn't steal anything, Chloe," I corrected sharply, my voice cutting through the morning air like a knife. "Your father gave it to me as restitution for the one hundred and forty-eight thousand dollars of my personal savings that you and Mom embezzled under the guise of fake emergencies."
"We didn't embezzle it! We were paying off extortionists!" she sobbed.
"Same difference," I shrugged. "Either way, that house is legally mine. If Mom wants a roof over her head, she’s going to have to apologize, get a job, and ask me for rent like any other landlord."
"You’re a monster," Chloe whispered, her voice trembling with hatred and disbelief. "You’re cold, unfeeling, and vindictive. Mom was right about you. You’ve never cared about this family!"
I didn't flinch. I didn't yell. I just looked at her with profound pity.
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"If caring about this family meant letting you bleed me dry while standing on a stage and humiliating me in public, then you're right, Chloe," I said softly. "I never cared. And I never will again."
I walked past her, leaving her standing on the sidewalk in the morning chill, weeping over an empire built on sand.
