Chapter 8 - The Aftermath in Tacoma
The motel was situated on an industrial access road off Interstate 5, squeezed between a diesel repair shop and a self-storage facility that smelled permanently of wet asphalt and fried chicken.
Evan sat on the edge of the unmade king-sized bed, staring at the synthetic floral bedspread.
His clothes were still damp from carrying the last four boxes through the Kitsap rain. The moving van was parked outside the window, its padlock dripping with rusty water, holding everything they owned in the world: three thousand dollars worth of clothes, forty-six boxes of home decor that had no home, and an espresso machine that required a twenty-amp circuit the motel bathroom did not possess.
Across the room, sitting at the small laminate desk beneath the humming television, was Lauren.
Her right hand was heavily bandaged in white gauze, resting on a clean motel towel. She was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt with the sleeves rolled up, her face devoid of makeup, her eyes puffy and red from sixteen hours of intermittent, furious weeping.
On the desk between them lay the blue-backed legal portfolio David Ross had delivered two hours earlier via bonded courier.
"She’s a monster," Lauren whispered, her voice hoarse and raw. "She’s an absolute, vindictive monster. She planned this, Evan. She set that ring out like bait. She knew I would borrow it for the gala. She wanted to humiliate me."
Evan didn't move. He didn't blink. He sat with his hands hanging between his knees, his eyes fixed on a cigarette burn in the carpet.
"She didn't set bait, Lauren," Evan said. His voice was terrifyingly quiet, entirely devoid of the defensive, placating tone he had used with her for five years. "The ring was in her drawer. Under her mother's napkins. In her private room."
"She knew I was looking for something to wear!"
"You were looking through her private things!" Evan roared, his head snapping up, his eyes bloodshot and terrifying in the harsh fluorescent light of the motel room. "You broke into my mother's bedroom! You stole a three-million-dollar heirloom! And then you texted her to gloat about it like you were some sort of high-fashion queen who had just conquered her territory!"
Lauren shrank back against the laminate chair, her bandaged hand pulling toward her chest. "Evan... I did it for us—"
"Stop saying that!" He stood up, towering over her, his fists clenched at his sides. "Stop saying you did it for us! You did it for your Instagram followers! You did it so you could strut around that ballroom for three hours pretending you were something you're not! And look at where it put us! Look at this room!"
He swept his arm across the space, knocking an empty paper coffee cup off the nightstand.
"We have nineteen hundred dollars, Lauren. We owe forty-six thousand dollars to my mother's estate. The moving van has to be returned to the rental yard by noon tomorrow or they charge us another two hundred bucks, and I have to be at the Tacoma terminal at six AM to explain to my regional manager why my corporate background check is being reviewed by the company's legal compliance team!"
Lauren began to weep again—not the pretty, delicate sobs she used during arguments in the kitchen, but the ugly, snot-streaked wailing of a woman who has realized the ground beneath her feet is entirely gone.
"What are we going to do?" she choked out, her shoulders shaking. "We can't sign that paper, Evan. If I sign that, I surrender everything. Your father's estate... the trust..."
"There is no trust for us, Lauren," Evan said, stepping toward the desk. He picked up the heavy black pen the courier had left beside the documents. "There never was. My father built that trust for a son who had honor. He didn't build it for a coward who let his wife walk all over his mother's life."
He flipped the document to the signature page.
Evan Henry Mercer.
His hand did not shake. He pressed the pen to the paper, signing his name with a heavy, deliberate stroke that tore slightly through the bottom of the page.
Then he turned the portfolio toward her, setting the pen down on top of the blue border.
"Sign it," he said.
"Evan... please..."
"Sign the document, Lauren. Or I walk out that door right now, I drive this truck back to Poulsbo, and I leave you here with David Ross and the county sheriff. Because I am not going to federal prison for your shoes."
Lauren looked at the pen. She looked at her bandaged hand, the throbbing ache in her knuckle a constant, burning reminder of the saw blade that had cut through her fantasy.
With trembling, clumsy fingers, using her left hand to steady her right wrist, she picked up the pen.
Her signature was jagged, uneven, completely unlike the flourishing, practiced script she used on her social media posts. It looked like the signature of an old woman whose strength had been broken.
When she finished, Evan picked up the portfolio, closed the leather cover, and slipped it into his briefcase.
He picked up his car keys from the dresser.
"Where are you going?" she asked, her voice cracking with sudden, desperate panic. "The truck is outside. We have to unload the boxes."
"I'm sleeping in the cab," Evan said, his hand on the motel door handle. "I need some air that doesn't smell like your perfume."
May you like
He opened the door. The damp, cold night air rushed in, carrying the roar of the Tacoma freeway and the smell of diesel exhaust.
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Lauren alone under the humming neon tube, holding her bandaged hand against her chest in the middle of a world she could no longer afford.
