Chapter 12
The journey was a blur of layovers, stale airplane coffee, and the dull, rhythmic thrum of jet engines. When I finally landed in Ohio and cleared customs, the automatic doors slid open to the arrivals terminal. Standing there, holding a generic cardboard sign with my name hastily scribbled on it in Sharpie, was my sister Megan.
I walked toward her, pushing my hastily purchased replacement duffel bag. I didn’t cry. I just stopped in front of her.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a brand-new, boxed smartphone. She pressed it into my chest.
“Don’t argue,” she said, her voice fierce and thick with emotion. “I already transferred your number over. You can pay me back when the dust settles.”
I gripped the box. It was the first thing anyone had given me that entire week without secretly attaching a condition, a lien, or a demand for collateral. It was pure, unadulterated support. We walked to her car in silence. The drive to my house took forty minutes. We didn’t discuss the logistics; we both knew what was coming. We were just gathering the required strength for the final structural test.
Chapter 7
Chapter 6: The Unhinged Escalation (The Workaround)
When we pulled up to the curb of my house—the house Walter Hayes built—I immediately noticed the familiar, aggressively leased SUV parked in the driveway. It belonged to Ethan. He had managed to fly back on his original itinerary and had beaten me home by a few hours.
“Do you want me to come in?” Megan asked, putting the car in park and unbuckling her seatbelt, looking like a woman fully prepared to commit a minor felony on my behalf.
“No,” I said, my hand on the door handle. “I need to do this alone. If I don’t establish the boundary now, they will keep testing the perimeter.”
I unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer. The house was quiet, smelling faintly of the lemon pledge I used on the baseboards and the dark roast coffee currently brewing in the kitchen. I walked down the hall, my footsteps soundless on the hardwood floor.
Ethan was standing in the kitchen. He was casually leaning against the granite counter, holding a steaming mug. My father’s old, chipped Cincinnati Reds mug. The visual of him occupying my father’s space, drinking from his cup after attempting to steal his equity, triggered a white-hot spike of clarity in my brain. All the exhaustion evaporated.