Chapter 4 - The Sound of the Door
The sun had set by seven, leaving the Charleston sky the color of a wet slate shingle, bruised and grey.
Inside Room 14, the darkness took over slowly, the only light coming from the green screen of the heart monitor and the pale orange glow of the streetlamps in the parking lot below.
Elena sat up in the bed. The pain in her ribs was still there, but it was no longer a sharp, tearing sensation; it had settled into a heavy, dull ache that she could manage by keeping her shoulders square and breathing through her nose.
Her phone began to buzz again.
This time, she picked it up.
"Elena?"
It was her father. His voice was no longer sharp and commanding; it sounded thin, hollow, and wet, like a man who had spent the afternoon drinking warm gin in a dry office.
"The bank denied the application," Richard Vance said. "The seller’s attorney just sent the notice of default. They’re keeping the fifty-five thousand, Elena. They’re keeping all of it."
"I know," Elena said.
"We don't have the money to replace the deposit," he said, his voice cracking like dry wood. "We’ve... we’ve already ordered the materials for the kitchen. We’ve paid the tile contractors. We’re sixty-eight thousand dollars in debt on the construction account, Elena. If the bank doesn't fund the construction loan, the suppliers will file a lien against the business by Friday."
"You should have thought of that before you told me to go home," Elena said.
"Elena, please," her father sobbed, the sound of his weeping dry and rattling over the phone. "Your mother... she’s been sick all afternoon. She’s in the bedroom with the blinds drawn. We worked forty years for this house. It was our dream."
"It was your dream," Elena said. "My dream was to live in a house where my husband didn't throw me against the counter. But you didn't care about that as long as the mortgage went through."
"We didn't know," he whispered. "Adrian... Adrian was always so polite. He said you were having those spells—"
"You knew," Elena said. "You saw the bruises on my neck at Thanksgiving. You saw my wrist in a splat during the spring walk-through. You just chose to believe his lies because he paid for your Yacht Club membership."
"What are we going to do?" her father asked.
"You're going to sell the business," Elena said. "And you're going to use the money to pay off the suppliers. And then you're going to move into a rental property in North Charleston."
"We can't live there!" he cried. "The schools... the neighborhood... it's not proper for people of our standing, Elena!"
"Your standing is fifty-five thousand dollars in the red," Elena said. "And I'm no longer your guarantor."
She hung up the phone.
The door to the room opened, and Diane Vance walked in, carrying a thick manila folder and a small bottle of cold water from the lobby. She looked at the tipped-over vase of roses, then at the pastry box, and finally at Elena.
"Adrian’s lawyer called me," Diane said. "He was frantic. He said Adrian went to the bank to check the holding company records and found out he doesn't own the Mt. Pleasant property."
"Did he?"
"He’s in a panic, Elena," Diane said, sitting down in the orange chair and opening the folder. "He called three different real estate brokers trying to find out if he can evict you. They told him he’s the tenant and you’re the landlord. If you file the emergency protective order, he’ll have twenty-four hours to vacate the premises with nothing but his personal effects."
"And the software?" Elena asked.
"The lease on the project-management software expires on July 31st," Diane said, pointing to a blue contract document with a red seal. "I’ve already prepared the non-renewal notice. It will be served to his office tomorrow morning at nine. Without that software, his consulting firm cannot run a single project. He’ll be in breach of his contracts with the state within forty-eight hours."
"How much is the firm worth without the software?"
"Nothing," Diane said. "It’s an empty shell with three leased computers and a silver Porsche that has four more payments before the bank repossesses it."
Elena looked down at her hands.
The pain in her ribs felt like a small, hot coal, but the coldness in her head was absolute. For six years, she had lived in a world where her husband’s rage was the only constant, where her parents’ greed was the only boundary, and where her own life was something she had to hide behind white roses and sweet apologies.
She had built their houses. She had built their businesses.
May you like
And now, she was going to take them down, brick by brick, until there was nothing left but the red clay.
"Serve the papers," Elena said.
