Chapter 16 - Foreclosure at the Voss Manor
On the first Saturday of February, Carys and I drove down to Columbus in my Ford F-250.
We didn't go to gloat. We went because Bob Kowalski had notified us that the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department was conducting the court-ordered public auction of the Voss real estate holdings on the steps of the municipal building, and I wanted to see the final chapter written with my own eyes.
The morning was brilliant, crisp, and clear.
The auctioneer, a brisk man with a booming voice, stood on the courthouse steps surrounded by twenty commercial bidders, salvage operators, and curious onlookers.
“Parcel 010-4492,” the auctioneer called out, his voice echoing off the stone pillars. “The real property commonly known as 1842 Cambridge Boulevard, Upper Arlington. Four bedrooms, four baths, four thousand two hundred square feet. Minimum opening bid set by the court at two hundred and ten thousand dollars.”
The Upper Arlington house—the grand, red-brick colonial Laurel Voss had bragged about at every family gathering for six years—was being auctioned off like an old tractor at an estate sale.
A commercial investment group out of Dayton opened the bidding. Within six minutes, the gavel fell at three hundred and forty thousand dollars—just enough to satisfy the first-priority bank lien and the legal fees of the bankruptcy trustee. Wallace and Laurel would walk away with nothing. Not a single dollar.
After the auction concluded, Carys and I drove past the Cambridge Boulevard house one last time.
Parked in the curving concrete driveway was a moving van from a discount rental company. Two men in dirty coveralls were carrying out Wallace’s leather armchairs, Laurel’s French provincial dining set, and the antique mirrors she had spent decades polishing.
Laurel Voss was standing on the sidewalk, clutching a small cardboard box containing a few framed family photos and an electric teakettle. She was wearing a cheap nylon winter coat, her hair uncombed, her shoulders hunched against the bitter wind that blew down the suburban street.
Wallace was sitting in the passenger seat of their battered Cavalier, his face turned toward the floorboards, an ankle monitor visible beneath his wool trousers.
Carys slowed the truck down as we approached. For a second, our eyes met through the truck’s passenger window.
Laurel looked at me. She saw my truck—dirty with Ravenna road salt, running smooth and steady, paid for ten times over. She saw Carys sitting beside me, laughing as she checked a text message from her kids.
Laurel’s mouth opened slightly, as if she wanted to say something—to apologize, to curse, to beg. But nothing came out. She had nothing left to say. Her world, built on borrowed money and stolen pride, had vanished like morning frost on a hot exhaust pipe.
I didn't stop. I didn't roll down the window.
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I just pressed my boot down on the accelerator, the big V8 engine humming with deep, dependable power, and left Laurel Voss standing on the sidewalk of the house she no longer owned.
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