Chapter 2 - The Scent of Old Paper
Dad didn't move. His jaw worked silently for several seconds, his knuckles white where he gripped his leather gloves. A vein along his temple pulsed with violent rhythm. "This is a bluff. Vance, you’re an old country hack who hasn't won a contested case since the Carter administration. You think you can walk in here with a stamped piece of paper and lock us out of a multi-million-dollar property?"
"I don't think so, Richard. I know so," Mr. Vance replied, not even looking at him as he handed the blue-backed document to Marcus Reed. "Mr. Reed is here in his official capacity as registrar of the Blackwood County Probate Court. He has the certified docket with him. If you touch a single drawer, wardrobe, or picture frame in this house, you will be committing statutory burglary of an occupied dwelling under state penal code section 459."
Marcus Reed stepped forward, his expression entirely devoid of sympathy. He was a local boy whose family had farmed the lower creek for four generations. He had seen Grandpa at church every Sunday; he had watched Grandpa sit in the front pew alone with me for fifteen years.
"Mr. Sterling," Marcus said, his voice flat and bureaucratic. "The sheriff’s department was notified forty-five minutes ago that an unauthorized removal of assets was potentially underway at this address. Deputy Miller is parked at the end of the gravel lane by the mailboxes. He has a copy of the recorded trust deed in his cruiser. If those men outside carry a single chair down that porch, they will be cited for criminal trespass, and you will be spending the night in the county holding facility in Oak Creek."
Mom let out a strangled, breathless noise that was half gasp, half sob. She turned on me, her eyes flashing with a sudden, vicious panic. "Clara! Look at me! I am your mother!"
"You haven't been my mother since October 14, 2007," I said. My voice didn't waver. "You dropped me off on that porch with two pairs of jeans that didn't fit, a pair of worn-out sneakers, and a stuffed rabbit whose ear was torn off. You told me you were going to the pharmacy to get medicine for Dad and you'd be back before dark. Grandpa waited with me on that porch until midnight. He wrapped me in his wool coat because it was freezing, and he carried me upstairs when I fell asleep crying."
"We couldn't afford two children!" she cried out, her hands flying to her cheeks, her voice echoing shrilly against the high plaster ceiling. "Richard’s company had collapsed! We were facing eviction! We had to move into a studio apartment behind an industrial laundry! We left you here because your grandfather had this place, he had land, he had a pension! We did it for you!"
"You kept Chloe," I said.
The word fell into the foyer like an iron safe dropped from a roof.
Mom stopped. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. Beside her, Chloe shrank back half an inch, her face draining of color under her heavy makeup.
"Chloe was three years younger," Dad stammered, his defense instantly sounding hollow, cowardly, and pathetic even to his own ears. "She was a baby. She couldn't handle the country. She was sickly—"
"Chloe went to private preschool in Evanston that spring," I said, reaching into the pocket of Grandpa's flannel shirt. I pulled out a small, folded piece of paper—a photocopy of a society page clipping from an Illinois suburban weekly, dated April 2008. Grandpa had kept it in the bottom drawer of his roll-top desk, tucked between his tax returns and his military discharge papers. "You bought a four-bedroom colonial in Highland Park fourteen months after you left me here. You posted pictures of your European vacation on the company website two years later. You had money for private tennis lessons, for ski trips to Aspen, for Chloe’s sweet sixteen party that cost more than this entire house was appraised for in 1995."
Dad looked at the clipping in my hand as if it were a scorpion. "How did you... who gave you that?"
"Grandpa watched you," I said. "Every single year. Not because he wanted your money. He didn't want a dime from you. He wanted to see if there would ever be a month, a week, a single day when you remembered that you had another daughter living three hundred miles away in the hills. He kept a log of every day you didn't call. It filled four composition notebooks."
"That old bastard was sick in the head," Dad snarled, his anger breaking through again, louder and uglier. "He turned you against us! He poisoned your mind against your own flesh and blood!"
"Get out," I said.
"Clara, be reasonable!" Mom reached out, trying to grab my wrist, but I stepped backward out of her reach. Her hand hung in the empty air, trembling. "This is your family! We're here now! We came back for you! We can be a family again! We can sell this drafty old pile of bricks, we can split the proceeds, we can get an apartment together in the city—you could come live near us! Don't you want your sister? Don't you want a real life instead of rotting in this dead-end valley?"
"Sell the house?" I smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "You don't want a family, Mom. You want the six hundred thousand dollars. You want the timber parcel to bail out Dad’s third failed business. You didn't even ask to see Grandpa’s grave. You drove three hundred miles with a commercial moving van, and you didn't even bring a single daisy to put on the grass where he was laid twelve hours ago."
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"I was going to go after we unpacked!" Chloe cried out, her voice rising into an irritated whine. "We’ve been driving since four in the morning! I’m tired, Mom! Make her stop talking like this! Tell those men to start unloading!"
"There will be no unloading, Miss Sterling," Arthur Vance said, snapping the accordion folder shut with a sound like a rifle shot. "Mr. Reed, please call Deputy Miller to the driveway. It appears Mr. and Mrs. Sterling require assistance finding their way back to the state highway."
