Chapter 3 - The Web of Collusion
The Elmwood Terrace house stood beneath two massive, skeletal weeping willows.
In my childhood, this place had felt like an enchanted castle. Dad had restored the wrap-around porch with hand-turned cedar balusters. The trim was painted in five historic Victorian colors—sage green, burgundy, cream, deep navy, and gold leaf.
Now, pulling up to the curb in Frank Bellamy’s truck, the house looked like a neglected museum.
The gutters were clogged with dead maple leaves. The porch steps—the very ones I had paid Wes $800 to repair six months ago—were rotting at the risers; he had simply slapped a fresh coat of gray deck paint over decaying pine.
“Stay in the truck, Frank,” I said softly.
“I’m keeping the engine running,” Frank said, his eyes scanning the quiet, tree-lined street. “If you aren't out in twenty minutes, I’m coming through that front door.”
“Twenty minutes,” I agreed.
I walked up the stone pathway, my footsteps heavy. The key I had carried on my ring for fifteen years slid into the brass lock.
The door opened with a familiar, low creak.
The smell inside was suffocating: stale roast turkey, burnt sugar, lavender potpourri, and unwashed dishes.
In the formal living room, my mother, Judith, sat in her wingback armchair. She was wrapped in an oversized knit shawl, staring blankly at the cold fireplace. On the coffee table beside her sat an empty teacup, a half-eaten plate of dry stuffing, and her cell phone, which was lighting up every thirty seconds with incoming calls.
She looked small. Fragile. But when she turned her head and saw me, the fragility vanished, replaced by an expression of sharp, petulant grievance.
“Maren!” She gripped the arms of the chair, attempting to stand, but sank back down. “Where have you been? Do you have any idea what you’ve put us through? Wes has been beside himself! Talia didn't sleep a wink!”
I didn't move from the entryway. I stood under the archway my father had carved with oak leaves.
“Where are the kids, Mom?” I asked quietly.
Judith blinked, thrown off balance by the question. “What? Mason and Sophie? Wes took them home hours ago after you made your scene on the phone!”
“Not Wes’s kids,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “My kids. Your grandchildren. Addie and Finn. Did you ask about them once today? Did you care that they spent Thanksgiving morning crying in their holiday clothes because their uncle told them they were unwanted?”
Judith waved her hand dismissively, an irritated flutter of wrinkled fingers.
“Maren, don't be melodramatic! It was one dinner! Wes was under extraordinary pressure! He needed an adult environment to discuss family business! You always make everything about your feelings!”
“Family business?” I walked forward, stopping two feet from her table. I pulled the printout of the 2017 deed from my coat pocket and dropped it onto her lap. “You mean this family business?”
Judith looked down. The moment her eyes registered Arthur Ellis’s forged signature and the $385,000 lien, she recoiled as if I had dropped a venomous spider onto her skirt.
“Where... where did you get that?” she whispered, her voice suddenly paper-thin.
“It’s a public record, Mom,” I said. “Anyone with an internet connection and five dollars can see it. Did you sign this?”
Judith’s lower lip began to tremble. She looked away, refusing to meet my eyes, staring fixedly at the faded wallpaper.
“Wes had an opportunity,” she murmured defensively. “He was expanding his business. He was going to set the family up for life. He needed collateral to secure the construction bridge loan. Your father always believed in Wes!”
“Dad never would have put this house at risk!” I shouted, the restraint I had held for twenty-four hours shattering. “Dad spent thirty years paying off this roof so you would never have to worry! And you let Wes forge his dead father’s signature!”
“It wasn't like that!” Judith cried, tears finally spilling down her powdered cheeks. “The bank said Arthur’s name was still on the primary title! They said we couldn't remove him without going through an expensive probate audit, and Wes didn't have time! The parcel option was expiring in forty-eight hours! Wes said it was just a formality!”
“And Talia?” I demanded. “Talia notarized a forged document seven months after her license expired! Did she think that was a formality too?”
“Wes promised her a twenty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee!” Judith sobbed, burying her face in her hands. “Talia needed to pay off her credit cards! We were going to pay the loan off in six months! Wes swore the condos would sell for six hundred thousand each!”
“And when they didn't sell?” I pressed, stepping closer. “When the project went bankrupt in 2018, what did you do?”
Judith looked up at me, her eyes filled with a terrifying, pathetic mixture of shame and entitlement.
“You had a steady business, Maren,” she whispered. “You were restoring the Pabst Theater contract. You had that big church restoration in Racine. You had money coming in every week. Wes said... Wes said eleven hundred a month wouldn't hurt you. He said you owed it to the family because you lived here rent-free while you were pregnant.”
The words struck me like physical blows.
*I lived here rent-free while I was pregnant.*
Eight years ago, when my world had collapsed, when my husband abandoned me with twin infants growing inside my womb, my parents had offered me my childhood bedroom for four months. And in exchange for those four months of shelter, my mother and brother had decided I owed them an open-ended, life-long indenture to service their criminal debts.
“I didn't just pay eleven hundred a month, Mom,” I said, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “I paid your property taxes. I bought your groceries. I paid for Talia’s culinary school that she quit after three weeks. I paid for Wes’s legal fees when his subcontractor sued him in 2021! I gave this family nearly two hundred thousand dollars over seven years!”
“And you’re our daughter!” Judith snapped, suddenly rallying her indignation, her eyes hardening into pure malice. “That’s what family does! You have a talent! You make good money! What were you going to do with it? Spoil those two children? Wes has a legacy to maintain! He has a position in the country club!”
I stared at the woman who gave birth to me.
In that moment, the last lingering illusion of maternal love vanished. There was no warmth here. There was no protective shelter. There was only an insatiable parasite that viewed me not as a child, but as an operational resource—a pack animal to be whipped when it stumbled and discarded when it demanded food.
The front door banged open violently.
“Get your hands off her!”
Talia burst into the living room, her face flushed with fury, her designer handbag swinging from her shoulder. She was wearing an expensive camel-hair coat—undoubtedly purchased with another credit card she couldn't afford.
“Talia,” I said without turning around.
“You disgusting, selfish bitch!” Talia screamed, charging toward me, her manicured finger pointed at my nose. “Wes told me what you did! You reported my charge on your card as fraud! My card got declined at the salon this morning! Do you have any idea how humiliating that was?”
I turned slowly to face my younger sister.
“You stole my credit card, Talia. You photographed the numbers off my kitchen counter while you were supposedly visiting your niece and nephew. That is a felony.”
“It was for the family dining room!” she shrieked. “We needed that table so Wes’s business associates could come over for holiday dinners! You have three credit cards with thirty-thousand-dollar limits! What does fifteen hundred dollars mean to you? Nothing! But you’d rather see me arrested than help your own sister!”
“Yes,” I said clearly. “I would.”
Talia recoiled, her mouth hanging open in pure shock. She had expected me to fold. She had expected the tears, the apologies, the familiar routine of Maren capitulating just to make the screaming stop.
“You’re sick,” Talia hissed, her eyes narrowing with venom. “You’ve always been jealous of me and Wes. Because Dad loved Wes more, and Mom always understood me. You were just the weird, nerdy girl who liked dirt and old bricks. You think you’re better than us because you work eighty hours a week? You’re nothing without this family!”
“I am everything without this family,” I said.
I pulled out my phone and held it up. The voice memo app was running. The red recording timer showed twelve minutes and forty-two seconds.
Judith gasped. Talia went white.
“Every word you just said, Mom,” I said calmly. “Every confession about the forged signature, the twenty-thousand-dollar payoff to Talia, the knowledge of the illegal notary, and the deliberate extraction of money from my accounts under false pretenses. It’s all recorded.”
“You... you can’t use that!” Talia panicked, lunging forward to grab my phone.
I caught her wrist in mid-air.
I spend my days hoisting forty-pound sandstone blocks, scraping mortar with steel chisels, and climbing thirty-foot scaffolding. Talia spent her days getting manicures. My grip on her arm was like an iron vise.
“Don't touch me,” I whispered.
She whimpered, pulling back as soon as I released her.
“On Monday morning,” I told them, looking between my mother and my sister, “the payment will not go through. Crestview Holdings will default. And when the investigators come to this door, you won't be calling me to fix it.”
I turned on my heel and walked out of the house.
May you like
Behind me, the screaming began—a cacophony of Judith’s weeping and Talia’s hysterical profanities—echoing through the drafty, decaying halls of my childhood home.
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