Chapter 8 - Stripped of Everything
At five o’clock that evening, Dad and I pulled up to the suburban house where I had lived in terror for the past six years.
The rain had cleared, leaving behind a crisp, biting chill. On the driveway sat two cardboard boxes, three torn garbage bags, and Elaine Holloway.
She was sitting on an overturned plastic laundry basket, wrapped in an old cardigan that had lost its shape. Her hair, which she usually had professionally styled every Tuesday, was tangled and wild. When our black town car stopped in front of the house, she scrambled to her feet with pathetic desperation.
"Claire! Claire, darling!" she cried out, rushing toward the car door before Dad’s security guard stepped out and blocked her path. "Tell them! Tell these thugs to let me back inside! They changed the deadbolts! They won't even let me take the sterling silver tea set!"
I stepped out of the vehicle, folding my coat around myself.
"The silver tea set was a wedding gift from my aunt," I told her. "Nothing in that house belongs to you, Elaine. Not the furniture, not the television, not even the bed you slept in."
Elaine’s eyes darted from me to Dad, and then to the imposing house that was now sealed with yellow police tape across the front door.
"You can't do this to me!" she wailed, tears carving dirty streaks through her foundation. "I'm an old woman! I have diabetes! I have high blood pressure! Who is going to take care of me? Ryan is in jail, and all my friends have blocked my calls! Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?"
"The city maintains an emergency homeless shelter on Fourth Street," Dad said with zero emotion. "I hear they serve oatmeal at six sharp. If you walk quickly, you might make it before the beds fill up."
"You monster!" Elaine shrieked, lunging toward Dad with her nails bared.
The security guard caught her arm in an iron grip, twisting her gently but firmly away and depositing her back onto the sidewalk beside her trash bags.
"If you step onto this driveway again, Mrs. Holloway," the guard warned, "I will have you arrested for criminal trespassing. You have ten seconds to pick up your belongings and start walking."
Elaine looked at me, searching for the fragile, terrified girl who used to apologize every time dinner was five minutes late. But that girl was dead. She had died on the kitchen floor under Ryan’s fist, and the woman standing in her place felt nothing for the pathetic parasite groveling on the concrete.
May you like
Without another word, Elaine grabbed the handles of two garbage bags and began shuffling down the sidewalk, her oversized designer slippers slapping against the wet asphalt.
***
