Chapter 3 - THE PARKING LOT CONFRONTATION
Three days later, I drove Michael’s restored 1968 Mustang into the downtown parking garage across from the state municipal building.
The deep rumble of the V8 engine echoed off the low concrete ceilings as I backed into my reserved stall. Since the verdict, Marcus Sterling and I had been working fourteen-hour days with the city council to secure the parcel of land on Third Street where the accident had occurred. My goal was simple: buy the abandoned industrial warehouse bordering the intersection, demolish it, and construct a modern, three-story pediatric arts and music academy bearing Emma and Noah’s names.
As I opened the driver’s side door and stepped onto the oil-stained concrete, the harsh scrape of rubber heels on pavement broke the silence behind me.
“Sarah!”
I turned around slowly, my fingers resting casually on the strap of my leather briefcase.
Stepping out from behind a concrete support pillar were my mother and my sister.
Beverly looked manicured to perfection, wearing her cream cashmere trench coat, oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses pushed up into her frosted-blonde hair, and carrying a leather handbag that cost more than two months of my late husband’s mortgage. But her face was pinched, her mouth trembling with rehearsed, theatrical emotion.
Beside her, Jessica wore an emerald-green silk blouse, tight designer trousers, and high-heeled ankle boots. She was holding a large bakery box tied with pink satin ribbon, her eyes wide, glistening with manufactured tears.
“Sarah, sweetheart, thank God,” my mother cried, rushing forward with both arms outstretched as if she were about to embrace a long-lost soldier returning from war. “We’ve been waiting by your office building for two hours! You haven't been answering our calls!”
I didn't step forward. I didn't open my arms. I took one deliberate step backward, placing the heavy steel chassis of the Mustang between them and my body.
“Stop right there, Beverly,” I said, my voice cutting through the damp garage air like an icepick.
My mother froze. Her arms fell awkwardly to her sides, her painted eyebrows drawing together in wounded bewilderment. “Beverly? Sarah, what is wrong with you? I’m your mother!”
“My mother was too busy eating poached salmon at a country club to bury her grandchildren,” I replied, looking directly into her eyes. “So as far as the state of Ohio and I are concerned, you are Beverly Vance.”
Jessica pushed past our mother, her jaw clenching with that familiar, entitled indignation she always used whenever she was denied center stage.
“Sarah, that is completely unfair and you know it!” Jessica snapped, thrusting the pink bakery box forward. “We made a mistake! Okay? We admitted it! We brought you almond croissants from Pierre’s—your absolute favorites! We are trying to make things right, and you are acting like a complete sociopath!”
I looked down at the pink box. Pierre’s was an upscale French bakery two blocks from my sister’s condo.
“Almond croissants,” I repeated quietly.
“Yes!” Jessica said, thinking she had gained an inch of emotional ground. “Because we love you! Because we’re sisters! We know you’ve been through hell, Sarah, but shutting us out when you just won this incredible, life-changing settlement… it’s tearing the family apart! Dad has been sick with worry!”
“Dad hasn't thought about me since he checked his golf handicap on the day Noah was put into the dirt,” I said, my voice dropping so low it made Jessica flinch. “Let me ask you something, Jessica. When you took those photos at your birthday party—the ones where you tagged yourself '#blessed' and '#familyfirst' while I was sitting in an empty funeral home trying to choose between satin and velvet linings for my six-year-old’s casket—did you eat an almond croissant then, too?”
Jessica’s face flushed an ugly, mottled crimson. “I was drunk! People were cheering for me! You can't hold one afternoon against me for the rest of my life!”
“It wasn't one afternoon,” I said. “It was thirty-four years of you taking everything, and my parents feeding you every scrap of dignity I owned to keep you smiling. But you didn't just take my childhood, Jessica. You abandoned my dead babies.”
My mother let out a soft, theatrical wail, reaching into her purse for a monogrammed handkerchief. “Sarah, please! The past is in the past! You’re rich now! You have forty-two million dollars! What good does it do to hold onto this bitter, ugly hatred? We need to heal as a family! We need to pool our resources and protect you from all the vultures who are going to come after that money!”
And there it was.
The veil ripped completely away.
Pool our resources.
I let out a soft, breathy chuckle that had no humor in it whatsoever. “You think I’m holding onto hatred, Beverly? Hatred takes energy. Hatred requires passion. I don’t hate you.”
I stepped around the front bumper of the Mustang, walking toward the pedestrian elevator bank.
“You are just three strangers who happen to share twenty-five percent of my DNA. And you will never touch a single copper penny of the blood money paid for my husband and children.”
“Sarah, wait!” Jessica shrieked, running after me, her heels clicking aggressively against the concrete. She grabbed my right forearm, her acrylic nails digging through the fabric of my wool coat. “Listen to me! Hunter and I are supposed to close on our house in Upper Arlington next Friday! His firm had a capital freeze, and our bridge loan fell through! We only need two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to secure the escrow! It’s a drop in the bucket for you now! You owe me this! If you had just come to my party, none of this bad blood would have happened!”
I stopped.
I looked down at her fingers clamped onto my sleeve.
The rage inside me didn't explode; it concentrated into a single, white-hot laser beam behind my eyes.
“Remove your hand from my body,” I whispered, “or I will break your fingers against that concrete pillar, and then I will sue your fiancé’s brokerage firm into immediate federal bankruptcy.”
Jessica looked into my eyes. She saw the absolute, unhinged stillness of a woman who had already survived the absolute worst thing a human being could experience on this earth.
May you like
She let go as if my skin were burning hot.
I stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the street level, and watched the heavy metal doors slide shut, cutting off the image of my sister and mother standing alone in the damp, echoing dark.
