Chapter 4 - The Poisoned Well
The box containing my desk items felt like a lead weight in my arms as I walked out of the corporate tower. Coworkers whispered in hushed tones behind glass partitions as two security guards escorted me out to the parking lot like a common criminal.
When I reached my car, my phone rang. I scrambled to pull it out of my pocket, hoping against hope that it was Evelyn.
It was my sister, Megan.
I pressed the call button and put the phone to my ear. "Megan?"
"What the hell is wrong with you, Daniel?!" Megan screamed into the phone, her voice piercing my ear. "Mom just came to my house crying her eyes out! She said you threw her out onto the street in the middle of the night! She said you threatened to call the police on her!"
I leaned against the hood of my car, closing my eyes as exhaustion washed over me. "Megan, you don't know what happened."
"I know that Evelyn threw a massive fit because Mom made a harmless joke at dinner!" Megan yelled defensively. "Mom told me everything! Evelyn left you, took Lucas, and now she’s using some fake legal scam to steal your job? Mom said Evelyn was always a gold-digger!"
"Shut up, Megan!" I snapped, my voice breaking with an anger I hadn't felt in years. "Just shut your mouth!"
There was a stunned silence on the other end of the line. Megan had never heard me yell at her before.
"Mom lied to you," I rasped, tears falling onto the hood of my car. "Evelyn cooked for twelve hours. Twelve hours, Megan! She made everything from scratch. And when Mr. Nelson arrived, Mom told me to lock Evelyn in the kitchen because she looked like 'hired help.' And do you know what I did? I went into the kitchen and told my wife to stay hidden so she wouldn't embarrass us!"
Megan went quiet, but her defensive tone didn't completely fade. "Well... Mom is from an older generation, Daniel. She cares about appearances. You know how she is! Evelyn should have understood that this was for your career! Why couldn't she just roll with it for one night?"
"Because she's a human being!" I screamed into the phone, uncaring that people in the parking lot were staring at me. "Because she's my wife! She washed Mom's dishes while Mom called her lazy! She cleaned our house while she had a fever because Mom threatened to tell me she was a terrible wife! And yesterday, Evelyn took control of Vance Holdings—a multi-billion-dollar trust her father left her!"
"Wait..." Megan’s voice dropped an octave, sudden greed and shock mingling in her tone. "Vance Holdings? Like... the company that owns the mall downtown?"
"Yes! She isn't poor, Megan! She was testing us! Testing me! And every single one of us failed! Mom treated her like trash, you treated her like a servant, and I let it all happen because I was too much of a coward to stand up to Mom!"
"Daniel..." Megan stammered, her stance shifting instantly. "We... we didn't know! If Mom had known she was rich, she would have treated her like royalty!"
The sheer disgust that filled my chest at those words was overwhelming.
"That makes it worse, Megan," I said, my voice shaking with pure hatred for the toxicity that had infected my family. "Treating someone like human garbage just because you think they don't have money makes you a monster. Mom is a monster. And I was her puppet."
"Daniel, wait, don't say that—"
"Tell Mom to stay away from me," I said coldly. "If either of you comes near my house, or tries to contact Evelyn or Lucas, I will enforce the restraining order myself. We are done."
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I hung up the phone and blocked both my mother's and sister's numbers.
Standing alone in the gray afternoon, watching the rain drizzle down onto the pavement, I realized I had finally cut the umbilical cord that had bound me to my mother's toxic control. But it had cost me the only woman who had ever truly loved me.
