Chapter 7 - The Auction of the Remnants
By Thursday afternoon, the curb in front of the brick craftsman looked like an estate liquidation after an eviction.
Derek had hired two day laborers from the parking lot of the Home Depot on Colfax Avenue, paying them with the last six hundred dollars he had in his business operating account. They had worked since dawn, hauling down the heavy floral brocade sectional, the mismatched pine dressers from Greeley, the boxes of Marianne’s decorative porcelain plates, and Paige’s mountain of clothing bags.
Everything was piled on the frozen lawn between the sidewalk and the street.
A white U-Haul truck—the smallest twelve-foot model, because Derek’s credit card had declined the hold on the twenty-footer—sat with its back door open, already half-full of cardboard boxes and mattresses wrapped in plastic wrap.
Marianne was sitting in the front passenger seat of Paige’s beat-up Honda Civic with the engine idling to keep the heater running. She was staring straight ahead through the windshield, her jaw clenched so tight the tendons stood out like piano wire in her throat. She had refused to speak to Derek since Wednesday morning, when he had informed her that Marcus had declined to wire the five thousand dollars, claiming his "liquidity was currently committed to a commercial escrow in Tempe."
Derek was carrying the last of the basement boxes—an old wooden crate filled with Gordon’s high school yearbooks and vintage auto repair manuals—when a black GMC Yukon pulled up to the curb behind the moving truck.
The door opened, and Frank Vance stepped out.
Behind him came two men in uniform work jackets carrying clipboards, followed by a certified master locksmith with an electric drill and a heavy steel tackle box.
Derek stopped on the front walk, the wooden crate heavy against his chest. "Frank?"
"Afternoon, Derek," the old lawyer said, adjusting his wool flat cap against the wind. "We’re forty minutes ahead of the noon deadline, but I see you’ve made good progress."
"We're almost done," Derek said, his breath coming in ragged, steaming gasps. His face was gray, his eyes hollowed out with exhaustion. "We just have to load these last three boxes and my tools from the garage."
"The tools stay, Derek," Frank said mildly, pulling a blue-backed legal document from his coat pocket.
Derek froze. "What do you mean, the tools stay? Those are my tools! My grandfather gave me that drill press!"
"Paragraph fourteen of the promissory note, son," Frank replied, tapping the paper. "All fixtures, improvements, and durable machinery housed within the detached outbuildings were pledged as collateral against the material balance in 2021. Until that forty-eight thousand dollars is satisfied, the contents of that garage are subject to a sheriff's distress warrant."
"You're taking my tools?" Derek's voice broke into a high, humiliated pitch. "How am I supposed to work? How am I supposed to do side jobs?"
"You should have thought about that when you were paying for Paige’s car insurance instead of your debt service, Derek," Frank said, not unkindly, but with the cold, immovable weight of fifty years of legal practice. "Tessa isn't your bank anymore. And your father-in-law isn't your guarantor."
The locksmith was already at the front door.
The high-pitched whine of an electric drill echoed across the quiet residential street as the old brass deadbolt was extracted from the oak casing. Within three minutes, a brand-new commercial-grade steel lock was installed, its polished chrome catching the midday winter sun.
Paige rolled down the window of the Civic, shouting over the engine noise: "Derek! The motel in Lakewood says if we don't check in by one o'clock, they’re giving the double-queen room to somebody else!"
Derek looked at Frank. He looked at the locksmith. He looked at the front door he had walked through for five years, the door where he had once carried his bride over the threshold while her parents clapped from the sidewalk.
"Where is she?" Derek asked, his voice barely audible over the wind. "Is she here? Is she watching this?"
"Tessa is in Fort Collins," Frank said. "She's signing the final paperwork for her new appointment as associate dean of student services. She won't be back until Sunday."
"Tell her..." Derek started, then stopped.
What was there to tell her?
Tell her that he was sorry about the salmon? Tell her that he should have told his mother to go to hell fourteen months ago? Tell her that he had traded a brilliant, generous, beautiful woman for the privilege of being the captain of a sinking ship of family narcissism?
"Don't tell her anything," Derek whispered.
He set the wooden crate down on the frozen grass beside the U-Haul, walked to the driver’s side of the moving truck, and climbed into the cab.
The engine turned over with a heavy, diesel rattle.
The small convoy—the beat-up Civic with Marianne staring blindly through the passenger window, and the half-empty U-Haul with Derek at the wheel—pulled away from the curb, their tires grinding through the dirty slush of the gutter, turning south toward the cheap commercial corridors of West Colfax.
Frank Vance watched them go until the taillights disappeared behind the trees.
May you like
Then he turned to the locksmith.
"Re-key the garage, Bill," Frank said, checking his watch. "And tell the heating contractor he can back his van into the driveway now. The new furnace arrives at one."
