Chapter 9 - The House of Cards Collapses
The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of Vance’s weeping.
It was not the dignified, mournful crying of an adult realizing his mistakes; it was the wet, suffocating, ragged blubbering of a child who had finally realized that the monster in the closet was not going to vanish when he closed his eyes.
"Mom," Vance sobbed, his forehead pressed against the mahogany table beside the silver fork. "Mom, what are we going to do? The bridge loan... Rosemont is going to call the police tomorrow morning. They're going to arrest me at the firm. I'll go to Stateville. I can't go to prison, Mom. Please. Please tell me you have the money."
Loretta did not look at her son.
She sat slumped in her high-backed chair, her face transformed from the polished, imperious mask of the Oakbrook matriarch into an ancient, gray, terrifying ruin. Her mouth hung slightly open, her breath coming in shallow, wheezing gasps that rattled against her ribs.
"Arthur," Loretta whispered, turning her vacant eyes toward her brother-in-law. "Arthur... the family land in Galena. The commercial parcel behind the depot. We can sell it. We can wire the money to Rosemont by eleven—"
"The Galena parcel was sold three years ago, Loretta," Uncle Arthur said, his voice flat, devoid of sympathy, cold as river ice. He set his bourbon glass down on the table, picked up his linen napkin, and tossed it into the center of his plate. "You sold it to pay for Tatum's wedding in Cabo. I told you then that you were burning the timber to heat the porch."
He stood up, buttoned his tweed jacket, and looked down at his nephew with an expression of profound, unadulterated disgust.
"You forged her name, Vance," Arthur said, shaking his head slowly. "Your father was a hard man, and he was an arrogant man. But he never stole from his own wife, and he never signed another person's name to a bank note. You're not a Vance. You're just a thief who wears expensive suits."
Arthur turned on his heel and walked out of the dining room.
A moment later, the front door of the mansion closed with a heavy, hollow thud that reverberated through the empty hallways.
I zipped my leather satchel, leaving the three binders and the silver fork resting among the scattered pearls on the mahogany.
"Sloan," Vance choked out, lifting his head from the table. His nose was running, his eyes swollen, his cheeks smeared with tears and spit. He reached across the wood, his hand trembling as he tried to grasp the hem of my blazer. "Sloan, please. Look at me. I'm your husband. We stood in front of God and promised—"
"You broke that promise five days before you made it, Vance," I said, stepping back from the table so his fingers caught only empty air. "You didn't marry me. You married an asset portfolio. You married a bailout."
I looked at Loretta one final time.
She was staring down at the silver fork, her fingers mechanically rolling one of her loose pearls back and forth across the wood.
"The locks on the condo were changed yesterday morning," I said. "Your son's remaining clothes will be delivered to the curb of this house by a private courier service tomorrow afternoon at two. If Vance, Tatum, Tyler, or you set foot on the property line of 340 West Superior again, the building security detail has full authority to utilize immediate physical restraint until the police arrive."
"You're a monster," Loretta whispered, her voice barely audible above the hum of the chandelier bulbs. "A cold, heartless monster."
"No, Loretta," I replied, turning toward the foyer. "I'm just the only person in this family who actually pays her own bills."
I walked out of the dining room, down the long marble hallway, and stepped through the double doors into the clean, freezing Illinois night.
May you like
As I pulled out of the driveway, the rain was turning to snow—the first real flurries of the Chicago winter, swirling through the headlights of my Audi like tiny, white stars.
In my rearview mirror, the great limestone house on Saddle Club Lane stood ablaze with light, burning through thousands of dollars of electricity it could not afford, illuminating a family that had finally run out of other people's money.
