Chapter 3 - The Inventory of an Infestation
The silence that followed was not peaceful. It was thick, oily, and vibrating with the toxic debris of three people who had spent fourteen months treating my sanctuary like an extended-stay motel.
I didn't take off my damp clothes immediately.
I walked into the kitchen.
The three jagged shards of the porcelain dinner plate still lay beside the island. I picked up the largest piece. On its surface was a smear of grease and a single, wilted leaf of roasted thyme.
I threw it into the trash can under the sink. The heavy plastic lid slammed shut with an echoing snap.
Buster followed me, his nails clicking against the hardwood, his nose nudging my wet knuckles. He was confused. The sudden shouting, the slammed doors, and the departure of the people who had routinely dropped table scraps to keep him from begging at their feet had left him nervous.
"It's okay, boy," I whispered, kneeling on the floor despite the water soaking through my slacks. I buried my face in the thick, golden fur of his neck, breathing in the scent of cedar shavings and wet dog. "It's just us now. It's over."
When I stood up, my phone was buzzing on the counter.
It was a text from the condominium’s management office:
System Alert: Pin Code 4412 (Mark Vance) DEACTIVATED.
System Alert: Pin Code 4413 (Eleanor Vance) DEACTIVATED.
System Alert: Pin Code 4414 (Chloe Vance) DEACTIVATED.
I took a deep breath.
Then I walked from room to room, turning on every single light until the five-hundred-square-foot loft was bathed in bright, unforgiving daylight.
I needed to see what they had done.
In the living room, the coffee table was scarred with circular water rings where Mark had rested cold beer bottles without coasters for months. Behind the sectional sofa, wedged between the upholstery and the radiator, was a collection of empty plastic snack bags, used dental floss picks, and an assortment of Chloe’s synthetic hair extensions that looked like dead tarantulas on the floorboards.
I went into the guest bathroom.
The mirror was spotted with dried toothpaste. The porcelain pedestal sink—an antique piece I had salvaged from a Victorian demolition in Port Townsend—had a hair-dye stain running down the basin in a sick shade of mahogany brown. On the brass shelving unit, my imported French soaps had been replaced by bottles of two-dollar dollar-store shampoos, their cheap chemical perfume hanging in the steamy air like cheap room spray.
In the small secondary bedroom where Chloe had been sleeping, the scent was even worse. A mixture of stale vape juice, cheap vanilla body mist, and dirty laundry. She had taken her clothes, but she had left the mattress stripped of its sheets, revealing two large, dark coffee stains on the quilted top. Tacked to the drywall with pushpins—leaving twelve ragged holes in the freshly painted gray surface—were several magazine cutouts of luxury sports cars and resort hotels in Miami.
I walked back into the kitchen, picked up my tablet, and opened my banking application.
I hadn't looked at the secondary savings ledgers in two weeks. I had been working seventy hours a week on the downtown commercial tower, leaving the day-to-day checking management on autopilot while Mark assured me he was "handling the household cash flow."
I clicked on the joint checking account—the account we had established solely for groceries, pet food, and shared streaming subscriptions.
The balance was $3.14.
I scrolled down through the recent transactions.
Yesterday: $184.50 — The Keg Steakhouse (Mark)
Three days ago: $92.18 — Sephora Downtown (Chloe)
Five days ago: $245.00 — Nordstrom Rack (Eleanor)
Six days ago: $450.00 — Cash Withdrawal (ATM West Seattle)
Seven days ago: $112.00 — Shell Oil (Mark)
I stared at the numbers.
Every single dollar of my mid-month bonus—the three thousand dollars I had transferred to cover our upcoming property tax installment—had been drained in nine days.
They hadn't just eaten my dinner.
They had been conducting a systematic, predatory liquidation of my operating capital while I was sitting in municipal planning sessions drinking lukewarm coffee from a vending machine.
My phone rang.
The screen displayed an incoming call from an unlisted number with a 253 area code—Tacoma.
I hit speaker.
"Sarah?"
The voice was rough, gravelly, and instantly recognizable. It was Frank Vance, Mark’s older brother—a diesel mechanic who had done eighteen months in state custody for aggravated assault in his twenties and lived in a double-wide trailer outside of Puyallup.
"Yes, Frank," I said, setting the phone down on the island.
"What the hell did you do to my mother?" he snarled, the background noise filled with the roar of an unbaffled exhaust system. "She's sitting in the back of Mark’s truck at a gas station off Highway 99, soaking wet and crying her eyes out! She says you pulled a gun on them!"
"Your mother is a pathological liar, Frank, and you are too stupid to check the police blotter before you call me," I said, my tone as flat as a pane of glass. "I gave them forty-five minutes to pack their stolen belongings and leave my home. If you or your brother set foot on this property tonight, you will be meeting the King County Sheriff’s Department."
"You think you’re so smart with your fancy degree and your downtown loft, don't you?" Frank’s voice rose to a scream. "You're a cold-hearted, selfish cunt! You used my brother! He gave up his career to support you!"
"Mark was a part-time counter clerk at Enterprise Rent-A-Car when I met him, Frank. He earned twelve dollars an hour and had sixty thousand dollars in defaulted consumer debt that I spent three years paying off through credit consolidation services. He gave up nothing. He found a meal ticket, and the meal ticket just canceled the buffet."
"We’re coming back for his tools," Frank spat. "He’s got four thousand dollars worth of mechanics' tools in that storage unit in your basement."
"There are no tools in my storage unit, Frank. The only things in that cage are my architectural models, my late father’s fly-fishing rods, and three boxes of holiday decorations. If Mark owned four thousand dollars worth of tools, he would have pawned them three years ago to pay for his truck lift kit. Do not call this number again."
I tapped the screen, blocked the number, and then sat down on the hardwood floor with my back against the kitchen cabinets.
My stomach let out a long, violent cramp of pure hunger.
It was nine-fifteen at night.
I hadn't eaten since six o'clock that morning, when I had swallowed half a piece of dry toast while running out the door to catch the express bus to the job site.
I looked across the kitchen at the refrigerator.
May you like
The light inside was bright, illuminating three jars of Eleanor’s half-eaten mayonnaise, two expired cartons of almond milk Chloe had insisted on, and half a pizza from two nights ago that had turned hard and translucent in its cardboard box.
I reached out, grabbed Buster’s collar, pulled him toward me, and buried my head against his ribs until the trembling in my legs finally began to slow.
