Chapter 10 - The Reckoning with the Parents
Three weeks later, the silence in my new apartment in downtown Portland was the cleanest sound I had ever heard.
I sat on the wide sofa, my right leg resting on an ottoman, free of the heavy plaster cast and now enclosed in a sleek, lightweight hinged brace. The swelling had subsided. The bone was knitting cleanly. I was back at work remotely, reviewing seismic bridge designs for the Port of Seattle.
A sharp knock sounded at my door.
I didn't stand up. I checked the security camera feed on my phone.
Gideon Vance was standing in the corridor. He looked twenty years older. His hair was uncombed, his expensive blazer wrinkled and stained at the cuffs. The arrogance that had defined his posture for thirty-four years had vanished, replaced by the hollow, slumped defeat of a broken man.
I pressed the intercom button. "State your business, Gideon."
He flinched at the sound of my voice through the speaker. He leaned toward the small brass grille.
"Sloane. Please. Open the door. Just five minutes."
"Say what you have to say through the interface."
"Sloane, they're taking the house," his voice cracked, cracking like dry leaves underfoot. "The bank foreclosed on the second mortgage. Darcy's bail was set at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars because of the flight risk, and the legal defense retainer is fifty thousand up front. We had to liquidate my retirement portfolio to cover the initial filings."
"Sounds like an expensive month," I said, my tone flat, devoid of sarcasm or anger. Just fact.
"Your mother is facing three years in state prison, Sloane! Three years! For flushing a few pills! She's sixty-two years old, she won't survive a state facility!" Gideon was crying now, tears tracking through the gray stubble on his cheeks. "The prosecutor said they will reduce the charges to probation if you sign a victim impact waiver and tell the district attorney it was a family misunderstanding. And Vanguard... Vanguard is suing Darcy for treble damages. One hundred and forty thousand dollars. If you sign the corporate release, they'll drop the civil suit."
I looked down at the engineering schematics on my screen. A bridge does not care if the concrete wishes to be strong; if the foundation is mixed with silt, the bridge collapses.
"When I was nineteen," I said slowly into the microphone, "I worked forty hours a week at a fish processing plant while taking nineteen credits of calculus and physics. My hands were cracked and bleeding from the brine tanks. I saved six thousand dollars so I wouldn't have to borrow money to eat during my sophomore year."
"Sloane, that was fifteen years ago—"
"You took that money and bought a horse," I continued, cutting through his whining without raising my voice. "You bought a horse for a girl who threw a tantrum because she wasn't picked to wave pom-poms at a football game. When I asked you how I was going to pay for my books, you told me that I was 'resilient' and that Darcy needed something positive."
"We made a mistake—"
"No, Gideon. You made a calculation. You calculated that because I was competent, because I could survive pain, because I didn't scream or cry or perform for you, you could strip everything of value from me and feed it to Darcy’s bottomless vanity."
"We are your parents!" he sobbed, slamming his open palms against the steel door. "We gave you life!"
"And you tried to take it away on a marble staircase," I said. "You stood by while Darcy kicked my shattered leg. You stood by while Mom stole my medication so my glassy eyes wouldn't ruin a photograph. You didn't ask if I was alive in the hospital. You only asked if the credit card cleared."
"Sloane, please... we have nothing left. We are ruined. The country club expelled us. Callum's father publicly denounced me in the state senate. We have nothing."
"You have Darcy," I replied. "You spent thirty years building her. Now you get to live with the finished product."
"Sloane!"
"My attorney has filed a formal no-contact order against both of you, effective as of nine o'clock this morning," I said, my voice steady and cold as deep water. "If you do not leave the hallway within sixty seconds, the building concierge will call the police, and you will join your wife in county lockup."
I switched off the intercom screen.
May you like
Through the heavy wood, I heard him slump against the wall, weeping with the helpless, pathetic rage of someone who had finally run out of other people’s lives to burn. After three minutes, his dragging footsteps faded down the hall toward the elevator.
***
