Chapter 5 - Eviction of the Parasites
The walk down the front steps was longer than Nathan had ever imagined it would be.
The sun had reached its absolute zenith, turning the quartz driveway into a blinding sheet of white heat. The three black vehicles of Julian’s security detail had not moved an inch; their engines were off now, sitting like three monoliths of dark glass and armored steel, reflecting the cheap, rented glory of Nathan’s life back at him.
Deputy Evans, a young man whose father had worked Nathan’s framing crews two summers ago, carried Patricia’s single hard-shell suitcase down the limestone stairs. He didn't carry it with respect; he held it by the handle like a sack of wet feed, his eyes fixed firmly on the horizon to avoid meeting the old woman’s gaze.
"Nathan, my shoes," Patricia wept, stumbling on the gravel in her three-inch heels. "My Ferragamos are still in the master closet. The ones with the gold buckles. Tell them, Nathan! Tell that girl to get my shoes!"
Nathan didn't speak. He walked with his head down, his linen shirt soaked through at the small of his back, his hands shoved deep into his empty pockets. His phone had been confiscated by Eleanor Cross’s assistants under the terms of the federal preservation order; his key ring, stripped of the house fobs and the gate remotes, held only the single brass key to his Escalade.
"The car is leased through Whitmore Development, Mr. Whitmore," Eleanor called from the top of the portico. She was standing beside the limestone columns, a pair of dark tortoiseshell sunglasses hiding her eyes. "You may use it to transport yourselves to a commercial lodging facility within county lines. The GPS transponder will be monitored. If the vehicle moves beyond the five-mile radius of the courthouse, the engine will be remotely disabled."
Nathan stopped at the driver's door. He turned, his face purple, his throat working as if he were trying to swallow a stone.
"You think you’ve won," he shouted toward the porch, his voice echoing thin and reedy across the valley. "You think you can just erase eleven years with some paperwork and a few high-priced suits? I made you, Claire! Nobody in this town knew who the hell you were until I put you in the society pages! You were just an orphan with a dead name!"
Julian took one step forward, coming to the edge of the limestone stairs.
The courtyard went dead silent. Even the cicadas in the weeping willows seemed to stop their sawing.
Julian didn't raise his voice, but it had that terrifying, pneumatic weight that had broken corporate raiders across four continents.
"My sister," Julian said, "was dining at the Élysée Palace while your father was still repossessing washing machines in Petersburg, Nathan. If you speak to her again—if you speak *of* her again—I will buy the debt on every property your family has touched since 1974 and call it due by noon tomorrow. Do you understand the English language, or should I have the sheriff translate it into something you can comprehend?"
Nathan’s jaw worked, but the air went out of him all at once. He shrank three inches, his shoulders caving in, the small, suburban bully collapsing back into the dirt he had come from.
He pulled the car door open, shoved Patricia into the front passenger seat where she immediately began to sob against the vinyl dash, and slammed the door.
Vanessa Albright was already in the back. She had pulled the rear sunshades up, hiding her face from the security guards, from the deputies, and from the long, humiliating line of cars that had begun to back up down by the iron gates.
The Escalade started with a rough, shuddering cough. Nathan put it into reverse, backed wildly through the turning circle, his rear tires throwing a spray of white quartz across the immaculate lawn, and then gunned the engine toward the gate.
We watched the dust rise above the willows until the sound of the eight-cylinder engine was swallowed by the noon heat.
Sheriff Miller spat a thin stream of tobacco juice into the gravel, then touched the brim of his hat to me.
"We’ll keep a car at the bottom of the road, Claire," he said. "Just in case he gets stupid after a couple of bourbons down at the tavern."
"He won't get stupid, Tom," I said, looking down at my hands. The swelling was already going down, though the deep purple ridges where the plastic had bitten would remain for weeks. "He doesn't have the money to buy bourbon."
Miller nodded once, understanding completely, and walked toward his cruiser.
When the last of the police cars had cleared the gate, Julian walked down the steps and stood beside me on the drive. He pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket, opened it, and offered me one.
I hadn't smoked since my second year at university.
I took it. He struck a match with his thumbnail, holding the flame steady against the midday draft until the tip caught.
"You were always too patient, Claire," he said, blowing a thin, blue plume toward the mountains. "Father told you that when you were sixteen. He said you’d let the wolves sleep in the parlor as long as they didn't chew the rugs."
"They didn't chew the rugs, Julian," I said, taking a slow, deep drag that burned my dry throat like clean medicine. "They tried to burn the house down with me inside it."
"Then it's a good thing we brought the water," he replied.
He turned toward the house, his sharp eyes surveying the limestone facade, the heavy slate roof, the wide, colonnaded terrace that overlooked three thousand acres of conserved timberland.
"What do you want to do with it?" he asked. "The market will bear twelve million for the parcel if we subdivide the ridge."
I looked up at the bedroom window on the second floor—the one where I had spent three hundred nights alone while Nathan was 'entertaining clients' in the private suites of the Commonwealth Club. I thought of Patricia’s voice echoing down the stairwell, complaining about the draft, complaining about the brand of mineral water, complaining about the fact that I hadn't given her a grandson.
"Don't subdivide it," I said.
Julian glanced at me, his eyebrow raised.
"Turn it into a regional conservation center," I said, flicking the ash into the gravel. "Dedicate it to Arthur Sterling. Let the public school kids from Richmond come up here on buses to study the watershed. Let them run through the gardens. Let them track mud across the heart pine."
A faint, rare smile touched the corners of Julian’s thin mouth.
"And the company?" he asked. "Whitmore Development has sixty-two active contracts. Half of them are half-poured foundations. If we pull the credit lines, four hundred framers and masons lose their work by Friday."
"We don't pull the credit lines," I said, turning to look my brother in the eye. "We rebrand it. Sterling Southern Infrastructure. We pay every subcontractor their back wages by tomorrow morning at ten. We fire every vice president Nathan hired from his fraternity, and we promote the site foremen who actually know how to read a transit."
I took one last drag and dropped the cigarette into the dirt, grinding it beneath the heel of my boot.
"And Nathan?" Julian asked.
May you like
"Nathan has six days before the grand jury convenes," I said, walking toward the open front door of my grandfather’s house. "Let him spend them in a Super 8 with his mother."
***
