Chapter 3 - The Deed and the Delusion
Demetrius froze. In all his twenty-seven years, he had never heard that tone from me. I had always been the forgiving mother, the safety net, the woman who worked extra overtime when his car note was late. He had mistaken my maternal exhaustion for weakness.
I walked back into the closet. I grabbed the first pink suitcase, zipped it halfway, and hauled it across the room. It was heavy, packed with makeup kits, curling irons, and cheap perfume. I didn't care. I dragged it to the balcony railing, hoisted it onto the ledge with both hands, and pushed.
The suitcase landed with an explosive thud on the driveway below, bursting open at the seams and scattering cosmetics, glittery shoes, and lingerie across the gravel.
Down on the lawn, Makenna shrieked at the top of her lungs. "My stuff! Demetrius, she’s ruining my life! Call the police! Call them right now!"
I looked down from the balcony. My guests were standing on the front porch now, holding their purses and coats, completely spellbound. Mrs. Fontenot was quietly recording the spectacle on her phone, angling the camera to capture both Makenna—covered in yams and mascara—and the mountain of clothes raining from the sky.
"Go ahead, Demetrius," I said without looking back at him. "Call the police. Tell Sheriff Landry that Evelyn Miller is throwing trespassers off her land. He was in room 402 last year when his gallbladder burst; I’m sure he’d love to come out and say hello."
Demetrius pulled out his phone, his hands shaking so violently he almost dropped it. "Mom, you don't understand the legal ramifications here! We have mail sent here! Makenna changed our address at the post office on Monday! We have established residency! You can't just throw our stuff out—that's an illegal eviction!"
I stopped. I slowly turned around to look at my son.
"You changed your mailing address to my house before I even spent my first full night here?"
"We had to!" he blurted out, defensive and reckless. "The lease in Metairie was up! What were we supposed to do, sleep in the street while you sit alone in a four-bedroom mansion bought with family money?"
"Family money?"
The air in the room dropped ten degrees.
"What family money, Demetrius?" I asked, my voice deadly soft. "Your father died twelve years ago with fifty-two thousand dollars in credit card debt and a lien on our old shotgun house. I paid his debts. I buried him with my overtime checks. I paid off this mortgage with forty-one years of night shifts, lifting patients until my lumbar discs slipped, wiping up vomit, holding the hands of men dying of lung cancer while you slept soundly in your bed."
"Dad left you life insurance!" he shouted, his face turning an ugly shade of red. "He told me he had a policy! He said whenever he died, we’d all be set! You took that money and hid it, and then you bought this plantation house to play queen while your own son is drowning in rent!"
A sudden, horrifying clarity washed over me.
His father had lied to him. Richard had spent twenty years filling Demetrius's head with grandiose tales of secret wealth, offshore accounts, and hidden insurance policies to disguise the fact that he was an unemployed gambler who lived off his wife’s paycheck. And Demetrius, too lazy to build anything of his own, had believed every single word. He had brought this little twenty-two-year-old girl into the lie, promising her that his mother was sitting on an inheritance that rightfully belonged to him.
"There was no insurance policy, Demetrius," I said. "Your father lapsed on the payments three years before he had his stroke. The only check that came after his funeral was a bill from the crematorium."
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"You're lying!" Demetrius hissed, tears of rage springing to his eyes. "You just want it all for yourself! But you can't kick us out! We live here now! The law protects tenants!"
Downstairs, the screech of approaching sirens cut through the evening air, whining from the main road toward my driveway.
