Chapter 8 - The Hammer and the Match
Arthur’s face crumpled like wet paper. “Maya… please… where am I supposed to go? My credit is ruined! The banks closed my accounts! I have four hundred dollars in cash in my wallet! I’m sixty-four years old!”
“You have two hands, Arthur,” Kenneth said, leaning forward on his cane, his eyes cold as flint. “You can get a job at the distribution center down in Massillon loading pallets. That’s what I did when I was eighteen, after you and Linda threw me out with a duffel bag and seventy dollars.”
“That was different!” Arthur wailed, tears streaming down his hollow cheeks. “You were young! You were strong!”
“And Maya was sixteen,” Kenneth replied, his voice rising, cutting through the freezing wind like a whip. “She was sixteen years old, sleeping on a stained mattress in that damp cellar, doing your laundry, scrubbing your toilets, while you sat up here drinking bourbon and watching baseball! Did you care where she was going to go when she turned eighteen?”
Arthur looked at me, his eyes wide, pleading, desperate.
“Maya… I’m your father. Blood is blood. You can’t just throw your own father into the street. The Bible says—"
“The Bible says what a man sows, so shall he reap, Arthur,” I told him.
I pointed down the driveway toward the six cardboard boxes.
“Your taxi is coming in ten minutes,” I said. “We paid for two weeks at an extended-stay motel near the interstate. After that, you are on your own. If you ever contact me again, if you ever step foot onto any property belonging to me or Kenneth, or if you attempt to visit Linda at the federal detention center, the U.S. Attorney will revoke your immunity agreement and put you in a cell right next to Darren.”
Arthur stared at me for five long seconds. He searched my face for the frightened girl who used to beg him to make Linda stop. He searched for the daughter who had cried when he forgot her high school graduation.
He found nothing.
He found only a Captain of the United States Army who had survived diesel fires, mortar shells, and thirty years of domestic terror, and had come out the other side made of titanium and will.
A yellow taxi turned onto Pine Ridge Road, its tires splashing through the slush, pulling up to the curb behind our Suburban.
The driver, an older man in an orange knit cap, popped the trunk.
Arthur didn't say another word. He didn't look at the house. He slowly picked up his boxes, one by one, his shoulders stooped, his knees shaking, and shoved them into the back of the cab.
He climbed into the rear seat, pulled the door shut, and pressed his forehead against the cold, tinted glass.
The taxi pulled away from the curb, its red taillights disappearing into the November fog.
Kenneth and I stood on the driveway in the silence that followed.
The wind blew a dry leaf across the concrete, where it caught against the edge of my boot.
“What do you want to do with it, Maya?” Kenneth asked, looking up at the two-story house. “The commercial real estate market in Canton is decent. We could renovate the kitchen, replace the carpet, and flip it for four hundred grand by spring.”
I walked up the porch steps, pushed open the front door, and looked inside.
The foyer smelled of stale perfume, cigarette smoke, and twenty years of misery. I looked down the hallway toward the kitchen, then down the dark wooden stairs leading to the basement.
I felt the phantom ache in my knuckles where the wooden spoon had struck me. I felt the cold concrete through my socks. I heard Linda’s shrill, mocking laughter bouncing off the rafters.
“No,” I said, turning back to Kenneth.
“No?”
“Call the township fire department, Ken,” I told him, a slow, clean smile spreading across my face for the first time in my life. “Tell the chief that the new owners of 412 Pine Ridge Road would like to donate the structure for controlled tactical burn training.”
Kenneth looked at me for two seconds, stunned. Then a massive, booming laugh erupted from his chest, echoing down the empty suburban street.
May you like
“You’re a menace, Captain Vance,” Kenneth grinned, pulling his phone from his pocket.
“I’m an engineer, Lieutenant,” I replied, looking up at the gray Ohio sky. “When a foundation is rotten, you don't paint the walls. You tear the damn thing down to the dirt.”
