Chapter 6 - The Enabler’s Awakening
Luke escorted Nathan onto the back patio. He wasn't invited inside. Nathan looked at the deep trench running through the yard, shaking his head.
“I didn’t know about the permit,” Nathan began, looking at his boots. “Carrie, I swear to God, I didn’t know Frank forged your name.”
“You knew he was trying to build on my land without my consent, Nathan,” I said coldly, standing beside Luke with my arms crossed. “You stood in my kitchen on Easter and ate my food while your sons destroyed my yard and hurt my daughter.”
“Brooke told me you agreed to it!” Nathan’s voice rose, desperate and ragged. “She told me you and Frank worked out a deal where we’d pay you five hundred a month under the table, and that you were just pretending to be mad because Luke didn't like the idea!”
Luke took a step forward, his voice a low growl. “You thought I was the problem?”
“I didn't know what to believe!” Nathan scrubbed his face with both hands. “Brooke handles all the finances. She told me we had to move because the landlord was selling. Carrie... our landlord wasn't selling. We were evicted. We were evicted because Brooke hasn't paid rent in four months.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Where did your paycheck go?”
Nathan opened the manila folder he was holding and held it out with trembling fingers. Inside were credit card statements, bank overdraft notices, and store credit lines—all in Nathan’s name, opened online.
“She spent it. QVC, high-end clothes, boutique furniture for a house we didn't own, travel baseball leagues we couldn't afford. When the eviction notice came, she ran to Frank. Frank told her, 'Don't worry, I'll take care of Caroline. She owes me.'”
Nathan’s knees seemed to buckle, and he sat down heavily on the edge of a cedar bench.
“Frank paid the six-thousand-dollar deposit to the contractor out of your mother’s account. But the contractor is demanding another eight thousand for site clearing and trenching before he'll release the equipment. Frank doesn't have it. He told Brooke that if she could get Carrie to back down, the bank would approve an equity line on Carrie's house to cover the rest.”
The sheer magnitude of the delusion was staggering. Frank had actually planned to use *my* house as collateral to finish an illegal apartment for his bankrupt daughter.
“Why are you telling us this now, Nathan?” Luke asked.
“Because the process server arrived at Frank’s house an hour ago,” Nathan said, looking up with haunted eyes. “Frank went berserk. He threw a lamp through his own sliding glass door. He told Brooke that they were going to sue Carrie for the fifteen thousand down payment plus 'damages' for emotional distress. And then Brooke told me that I needed to take the fall for the permit—that I should tell the police I submitted it online as a mistake.”
Nathan let out a dry, bitter laugh that sounded like choking.
“She wanted me to commit a felony to protect her father. I have two boys. I work sixty hours a week. I’m done, Carrie. I took the kids to my mother’s house in Moore. I’m filing for divorce tomorrow.”
Inside the house, the back door clicked open. Mom stood in the doorway, having heard every word through the screen.
She looked at Nathan, her son-in-law of ten years, and then down at the papers in his hands.
“Nathan,” Mom said softly.
“Yes, Evelyn?”
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“Make sure your lawyer asks for full custody of those boys,” she said, her voice completely devoid of its former fragility. “Because if Brooke Hale has an ounce of her father in her, she will ruin them just to prove she can.”
***
