Chapter 8 - The Clean Break
On Saturday morning, three days after the assault, four trucks pulled up to 1428 Crestview Lane.
Lena was still in the hospital, scheduled for discharge on Sunday. She didn't need to see the house again. She didn't need to see the shattered glass in the hallway or the blood drops that had dried dark on the kitchen baseboards.
Derek had brought five men from his fabrication shop—burly, quiet guys with grease under their fingernails who moved heavy steel for a living. I had brought three of my closest friends from work.
We didn't hire movers. We didn't want strangers touching her belongings, and more importantly, we wanted every trace of Lena removed from that house before Travis’s family could attempt any legal maneuvers to freeze her personal property.
We worked with mechanical efficiency.
Cardboard boxes were taped, labeled, and loaded: Lena’s Books, Lena’s Easel, Lena’s Clothes, Lena’s Kitchenware.
Every piece of furniture that she had purchased with her own savings before the marriage was disassembled and wrapped in moving blankets. Every framed watercolor she had painted was carefully padded and packed into crates.
At 11:30 a.m., an older blue sedan pulled up to the curb.
A woman with bleach-blond hair and heavy eye makeup stepped out, slamming the door behind her. It was Travis’s mother, Brenda.
She marched up the front walkway, her purse swinging violently from her elbow, her face contorted in furious indignity.
"What do you think you’re doing?" she shrieked from the base of the porch steps. "This is my son's house! You have no right to touch his things! You’re looting his property!"
Derek stepped out onto the porch.
He was carrying a large plastic tote filled with Lena’s winter coats. He set it down gently against the railing, wiped his brow with the back of his forearm, and looked down at Brenda.
"Morning, Brenda," Derek said.
Brenda stopped dead on the second brick step. Her mouth worked open and shut, her eyes darting to Derek’s ears, then to the men moving heavy dressers out of the front door behind him.
"You..." she hissed, her voice dropping into a venomous whisper. "You broke my son's ribs. You had him thrown in a cell like an animal. He’s facing ten years because of you people!"
I stepped out of the front door, holding a certified copy of the temporary protection order Arthur Vance had secured forty-eight hours earlier.
"Brenda," I said, walking down the steps until I stood three feet from her. "This is an emergency order of exclusive possession issued by the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. It awards Lena sole custody of this premises and permits her designated representatives to remove her personal effects."
I held the document out. She didn't take it.
"He was stressed!" Brenda cried, tears of self-pity welling in her eyes. "He was working eighty hours a week! Lena was always nagging him, always threatening to leave, pushing him until he snapped! She provoked him!"
The air around the porch seemed to freeze.
The two men carrying Lena’s oak dining table stopped on the threshold, their eyes locking onto Brenda with cold contempt.
"Provoked him?" I asked. My voice was dangerously quiet. "He hit a hundred-and-ten-pound girl with a thirty-three-inch baseball bat while she was on her knees in the kitchen, Brenda. He shattered both bones in her arm."
Brenda looked away, her face flushing red. "He... he didn't mean to hurt her like that. He just lost his temper."
"If you take one more step toward this house," I said, pointing toward the street, "I will have the patrol unit sitting around the corner arrest you for violating a court-ordered protective boundary. Get in your car, drive to the county jail, and tell your son to start practicing how to live in an eight-by-ten cell. Because that is where he is going to spend the next seven years of his life."
Brenda glared at me, then at Derek, who stood on the porch with his arms crossed, watching her with that unblinking, predatory calm.
She knew there was no leverage here. No guilt to manipulate. No polite social conventions to hide behind.
She spun on her heels, her cheap shoes clacking against the concrete, got back into her sedan, and tore away down Crestview Lane, tires squealing in a pathetic display of impotent rage.
Derek picked up the tote of coats.
May you like
"That's the last of her clothes, Mark," he said quietly.
"Let's get the truck locked up," I told him. "We're going home."
