Chapter 10 - The Fall of Melissa
By the third week of January, the house on Maple Street had become an icy war zone.
The natural gas had been shut off after Daniel failed to pay the overdue balance. Melissa spent her days wrapped in three coats, desperately calling her wealthy friends in Villanova, begging for loans or temporary housing.
Not a single door opened.
The rumors had traveled through the country club circuit like wildfire. Everyone knew that Daniel Miller’s construction firm had collapsed under debt, that his luxury vehicles were gone, and that Evelyn Miller—the dignified matriarch everyone respected—had cut them off completely after being publicly humiliated at Christmas dinner.
"Nobody will help us," Melissa wept into the kitchen counter one evening, her breath misting in the freezing air of the unheated house. "My parents won't even wire five hundred dollars. My father said you made your bed and we have to lie in it."
Daniel sat at the end of the long mahogany dining table—the same table where he had pounded his fist and demanded rent from me. He had a half-empty bottle of cheap bourbon in front of him, his beard overgrown and unkempt.
"We have ten days left before the sheriff physically removes the furniture," Daniel muttered darkly.
"I’m leaving," Melissa said coldly, standing up.
Daniel looked up, his bloodshot eyes narrowing. "What?"
"I’m taking Chloe and going to stay in my sister’s guest room in Maryland. I am not going to be dragged out onto the sidewalk by police officers while the Abernathys film it on their iPhones."
"You're abandoning me?" Daniel rasped, rising to his feet. "After everything I bought for you? The trips? The jewelry? The house you demanded I renovate?"
"You didn't buy any of it, Daniel," Melissa hissed, looking at him with utter disgust. "Your mother bought it. And the minute she stopped paying, you turned into a nobody."
She grabbed her packed luggage from the hallway, whistled for twelve-year-old Chloe, and marched out the front door into the freezing drizzle, leaving Daniel alone in the echoing, dark rooms of the house he had tried to steal.
An hour later, Ethan walked down the stairs, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
Daniel looked at his son from the darkness of the kitchen. "You leaving too?"
Ethan paused at the front door, looking back at his father.
"I'm catching the five-fifteen bus to Lancaster, Dad," Ethan said quietly. "Grandma bought me a ticket."
"Don't go to her," Daniel croaked, reaching out a trembling hand. "She destroyed us, Ethan. She destroyed our family."
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"No, Dad," Ethan replied, his hand resting on the brass doorknob. "Grandma just stopped protecting you from who you really are."
The heavy front door clicked shut, leaving Daniel completely alone in the silent, cold house.
