Chapter 5 - The Unraveling in Sandy Springs
While I began planning my new life, the storm I had left behind in Sandy Springs was slowly consuming Kevin and Lorraine's household.
I didn't seek out news about them, but in a suburban city like Atlanta, gossip travels through mutual acquaintances like water finding a drain. Lorraine’s cousin, Sarah—my sister’s daughter—called me three weeks after my meeting with Arthur Vance.
Sarah was a sweet thirty-two-year-old schoolteacher who had always seen through Kevin’s slick, arrogant facade.
"Aunt Dot," Sarah said hesitantly over the phone. "I don't know if I should be telling you this, but... have you talked to Lorraine?"
"Not since she left my porch, Sarah," I replied calmly, watering my windowsill herbs. "And I have no intention of calling her."
"Well," Sarah sighed, "the whole family is talking about it. Kevin is in deep trouble, Aunt Dot."
"Is he?"
"His lawyer got Arthur Vance's letter last week," Sarah revealed, her voice dropping to a juicy whisper. "Apparently, when Kevin saw the forty-two-thousand-dollar counter-claim bill and realized Arthur was going to subpoena his boss for a deposition, Kevin nearly had a heart attack. He made his lawyer drop the whole thing immediately."
"Good," I said. "Arthur is very thorough."
"That's not even the worst of it," Sarah continued. "Kevin had bragged to his boss for months that he owned a luxury lakefront estate on Oconee. He had invited his boss's son up for the Fourth of July to secure a promotion to Senior Vice President. When Mr. Harrison had them removed by the sheriff's deputies, the boss’s son went back to Denver and told his father that Kevin was a fraud who was using his mother-in-law's house and getting kicked off the property for trespassing."
I stopped watering my parsley. "Did Kevin get the promotion?"
"He got demoted, Aunt Dot!" Sarah said, unable to hide the note of triumph in her voice. "They reassigned him to a regional account management position! He lost his executive bonus! And Eleanor—Kevin’s mother—is telling everyone in Denver that Lorraine tricked them and ruined their family reputation!"
I sat down in my kitchen chair. I felt no joy in Kevin’s downfall, but I felt a profound sense of cosmic justice. Kevin had built his entire identity on a mountain of lies, vanity, and borrowed status. When I pulled my lake house out from under that mountain, the whole fake structure had collapsed under its own weight.
"How is Lorraine?" I asked softly, feeling that deep, maternal ache return for a fleeting second.
"She’s miserable, Aunt Dot," Sarah said honestly. "She’s fighting with Kevin every single day. She realized that Kevin only cared about the lake house because it made him look wealthy to his friends. Now that it’s gone, they can’t even afford their mortgage payment in Sandy Springs because Kevin lost his bonus. They’re talking about downsizing."
I remained silent for a long moment.
"Aunt Dot?" Sarah asked gently. "Are you going to help her if she asks?"
I looked at the small green clock above my microwave. The clock that had marked six forty-seven on a Tuesday evening when my daughter had told me I wasn't needed.
"Sarah," I said quietly. "Lorraine is thirty-six years old. She chose her husband. She chose his values. She chose to stand by while he treated her mother like a servant. I spent thirty-six years protecting her from the consequences of her choices. It’s time she learned how to protect herself."
"What are you going to do, Aunt Dot?"
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I looked at the colorful travel brochures spread across my dining table—brochures for small-ship cruises through the Scottish Highlands, cooking classes in Tuscany, and train journeys through the Canadian Rockies.
"I’m going to pack my bags, Sarah," I smiled. "And I’m going to see the world."
