Chapter 4 - The Pressure Escalates
By nine o'clock the next morning, the fallout began in earnest.
My phone rang continuously. It was my father, then my mother, then a series of increasingly frantic text messages from Diane.
Rachel, please answer. Dad is having chest pains. You are killing your parents over a stupid computer.
Rachel, I talked to a lawyer. You can't kick Mom and Dad out of their home! It's illegal!
If you don't drop the police charges by noon, I'm going to tell everyone at your hospital what kind of terrible daughter you are.
I didn't reply to a single message. Instead, I forwarded every text directly to Evan, who was already filing the formal eviction paperwork at the county courthouse.
Around eleven o'clock, while I was at my shift in the pediatric wing, my mother showed up in the hospital lobby. She looked frail and pale, clutching a handkerchief in her trembling hands.
When I stepped down to the lobby during my break, she rushed over to me. "Rachel! Thank God. You have to put a stop to this insanity."
"Mom, you shouldn't be here," I said quietly, keeping my voice professional so my coworkers wouldn't stare.
"Your father didn't sleep all night," she wept. "Evan Reed served us with an eviction notice at eight this morning! Thirty days! Where are we supposed to go at our age?"
"You can rent an apartment, or you can go live with Diane," I said cold-heartedly. "You chose her side last night. You sat there while her kids humiliated Lily."
"We didn't mean for it to go that far!" my mother whimpered. "Jake was just being a silly boy! And Zoe was jealous because Lily gets all the attention for her art! A mother protects her children, Rachel—why can't you understand that Diane was just protecting Zoe's feelings?"
I stared at my mother, feeling a cold realization wash over me. "You think protecting Zoe's feelings justifies burning Lily's hard work?"
"Lily is strong! She can bounce back!" my mother argued. "But Zoe is delicate! She didn't get into that design program, and seeing Lily work on her portfolio was making her depressed!"
"So you sacrificed my daughter to soothe your other granddaughter's ego," I said softly. "Thank you for finally admitting it, Mom."
"Rachel, please..."
"The eviction notice stands," I interrupted her. "If you try to contact me at work again, I will have hospital security escort you off the premises. And tell Diane that if she posts anything on social media about me, Evan will add defamation to the lawsuit."
My mother stood frozen as I turned my back and walked through the heavy double doors back into the clinic.
Meanwhile, Lily was at home, working on my tablet to finalize her submission. With all her files safely retrieved from the cloud server, she spent the day refining her presentation. By 4:00 PM, two full days before the deadline, she hit the "Submit" button for the prestigious National Youth Design Academy.
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An hour later, her art teacher called her to confirm that the board had received her application and were blown away by the depth of her portfolio.
The fire had failed.
