Chapter 4 - The Inventory of Scorn
Chloe took two steps down, stepping off the bottom stair and standing directly in front of me. She had taken off her sunglasses, and her face was flushed with an ugly, childish rage. She was only twenty-one, but the lines around her mouth were already bitter, carved by the same petty vanity that had consumed our mother.
"You think you’re so smart, don't you?" Chloe hissed, leaning toward me so close I could smell the stale peppermint and expensive foundation on her skin. "You think you won. Look at you! You’re wearing an old dead man’s shirt. You don't know anything about the world! You’ve never been to Paris. You’ve never been to New York. You’ve spent your whole life scraping carrots out of the dirt and wiping drool off an old man’s chin!"
*Smack.*
The sound wasn't loud, but it was absolute.
It wasn't me who slapped her. It was Eleanor.
Chloe stumbled back, clutching her cheek, her eyes wide with shock. "Mom?! What did you do that for?!"
Eleanor’s hand was still raised, trembling, her face pale as parchment. "Shut up, Chloe. Just... shut your mouth."
Eleanor wasn't defending me. She wasn't defending Grandpa. She had struck her daughter out of sheer, unadulterated panic. She knew what Arthur Vance had in his hands. She knew that every word coming out of Chloe’s mouth was another nail being driven into their coffin.
"Arthur," Eleanor whispered, stepping past her bewildered daughter and sinking to her knees right there on the runner, among her spilled lipsticks and gold compacts. "Arthur, please. Richard made mistakes. Terrible mistakes. He trusted the wrong people. We were misled! We have nowhere to go. They’ve frozen our accounts in Chicago. The sheriff there... they served us with the eviction notice on Monday. That moving truck out there—that’s everything we have left. Everything."
Richard slumped against the door, his fight completely drained. The bluster, the arrogance, the cashmere-coated swagger—it had all evaporated, leaving only a frightened, aging con man who had run out of road.
"We don't need the whole property," Eleanor sobbed, looking up at Arthur, and then, horrifyingly, turning her tear-streaked face toward me. "Clara... my baby. Look at me. I’m your mother. You can't let them put us on the street. We’re your family! The carriage house... the little cottage down by the creek where the timber hands used to stay—we could live there! We wouldn't bother you. Richard can work the grounds! He can chop wood, he can maintain the fences—"
"Richard doesn't know how to chop wood, Eleanor," I said, setting my cold coffee mug down on the rosewood side table the movers had abandoned. "When he was twelve, Grandpa gave him an axe to help clear the windfall from the winter storm, and he threw it into the river because it gave him blisters on his palms."
Richard looked up, his eyes bloodshot, his mouth open. "How do you know that?"
"Because Grandpa told me," I said. "He told me every story. He told me about the time you stole forty dollars from the church collection plate to buy a leather jacket. He told me about the time you wrecked his 1968 Ford truck and blamed it on the neighbor’s boy. He told me that you weren't evil, Richard. He said you were just weak. He said a weak man is more dangerous than an evil one, because an evil man will at least tell you he’s going to rob you, but a weak man will rob you while he’s smiling and telling you he loves you."
I walked over to the garbage bags lying on the floor.
I bent down, took the first one by the plastic tie, and then took the second. I picked them up, holding them in my hands, exactly as Eleanor had forced them into my chest five minutes earlier.
"You told me to pack my things," I said, looking down at my mother where she knelt on the floorboards. "You told me that I was Grandpa’s burden. You told me this house belonged to you."
"I was upset!" Eleanor wept, reaching out to grasp the hem of my jeans. "I was exhausted from the drive! I didn't mean it, Clara—you know how stress makes me talk!"
I stepped back, pulling my jeans out of her grasp.
"Arthur," I said, turning toward the lawyer. "Read Item Three."
Arthur Vance adjusted his spectacles. He looked down at the paper, his voice carrying the finality of an iron gate swinging shut in a stone archway.
"'Item Three: In the event that my biological son, Richard Holloway, and my biological daughter, Eleanor Holloway-Bancroft, should present themselves upon the grounds of this homestead within thirty days following my death, the following conditional clause shall immediately take effect.'"
Richard straightened up slightly, a desperate, pathetic glimmer of hope appearing in his watery eyes. "A conditional clause? See? I told you! He wouldn't leave us with nothing! What is the condition, Arthur? What do we have to do?"
Arthur Vance looked at Richard with a look of pure, unadulterated pity.
"'The condition,'" Arthur read, "'is one of full restitution. In order to receive any portion of the Holloway Trust, Richard and Eleanor must first reimburse the estate for the following items: First, the principal sum of sixty thousand dollars stolen in 1991, compounded at six percent interest annually, totaling two hundred and eighteen thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars. Second, seventeen years of court-ordered child support for the minor child Clara, calculated at the statutory rate of one thousand two hundred dollars per month, totaling two hundred and forty-four thousand, eight hundred dollars. Third, the sum of fourteen thousand dollars expended on medical treatments for Clara’s severe respiratory distress incurred during the winter of 2007.'"
Arthur paused, looking over the paper directly at Richard.
May you like
"'Total sum due to the Holloway Heritage Trust before any inheritance may be considered: four hundred and seventy-seven thousand, two hundred and twelve dollars. Cashier's check or certified funds only. No promissory notes will be accepted.'"
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