Chapter 5 - The Eviction of the Parasites
What followed was twenty minutes of pure, unadulterated chaos that I watched from the comfort of Graham’s leather armchair, a hot mug of decaf tea placed into my hands by a sympathetic female Captain from the escort team.
My sister Kendra was sobbing hysterically as two giant MP officers stood over her in the primary bedroom, watching her every move as she frantically shoved her high heels, makeup bags, and designer coats back into her luggage.
“You can’t do this, Maren!” Kendra shrieked from the top of the stairs, her mascara smudged down her cheeks like dark riverbeds. “We’re your family! It’s Thanksgiving! Where are we supposed to go? Every hotel in Colorado Springs is booked!”
I took a slow sip of my tea, feeling the warmth spread down my chest.
“Brent’s business is doing so well,” I said, echoing his exact words from an hour ago. “I’m sure he can rent a nice suite downtown.”
Brent came shuffling down the stairs carrying a single duffel bag, his face red and sweaty. Outside the window, a heavy flatbed tow truck was already hoisting his eighty-thousand-dollar BMW onto its bed, the winch making a loud, rhythmic screech-screech-screech that sounded like music to my ears.
“Maren, please,” Brent begged, his corporate arrogance completely vanished, replaced by the desperate pleading of a coward caught in the open. “Tell them to stop the tow! That’s my company vehicle! My laptops are in the trunk!”
“The laptops have been impounded for security review,” the Colonel informed him calmly from the front door. “Since they were brought into a classified secure facility without clearance. You can petition the Department of Defense for their return in six to eight months.”
Brent looked as if he had been punched in the stomach. He slumped against the wall, clutching his duffel bag like a drowned rat.
My father stood in the center of the living room, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity as an MP officer politely but firmly took the keys to the house and the boat from his hands.
“Maren,” Richard said, his voice shaking with a combination of rage and embarrassment. “You allowed this. You knew these military people were coming. You let us look like fools!”
I set my teacup down on the side table. I stood up slowly, holding my pregnant belly, and walked over to my father.
“No, Dad,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “You made yourselves look like fools the moment you decided a widow was a inconvenience in her own home. You mistook my silence for weakness. You mistook my grief for surrender. Graham died protecting people who couldn't protect themselves. I am his wife. I am the mother of his child. And I will never, ever let anyone walk over us again.”
My mother tried to step forward, tears streaming down her face. “Maren, darling... the turkey... it’s in the oven... can’t we just sit down and talk about this over dinner?”
I looked at the woman who had brought me into the world, the woman who had carried my clothes out to a freezing garage without looking me in the eye.
“Take your turkey, Eleanor,” I said cold as ice. “Take your pie. Take your nine-hundred-dollar bottle of Bordeaux. And get out of my house.”
At 07:45 AM, the front door closed behind them.
Through the window, I watched the four of them—my father, my mother, Kendra, and Brent—trudging down the snow-covered driveway in their coats, dragging their rolling suitcases behind them through the slush. Brent was furiously arguing with Kendra; my father was yelling into his cell phone, trying to find a car rental; my mother was weeping into her scarf.
A second flatbed tow truck was pulling away with my father’s precious bass boat in tow, its red tail lights disappearing into the mountain fog.
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The house was quiet again.
Not the heavy, suffocating quiet of grief, but a clean, purified quiet—like the air after a summer thunderstorm.
