Chapter 12: After the Slamming Stopped
Sloan left in ninety minutes, not two hours.
She carried four bags to the silver Audi — the same one that had been in the driveway at two in the morning — and the man who drove it loaded them into the trunk without looking at the house.
Harrison stood on the porch.
He didn't help her.
He didn't stop her.
He watched.
I watched from the kitchen window.
When the car pulled away, Harrison came inside and sat down at the table.
He didn't speak for a while.
I made fresh tea and set a cup in front of him and sat across from him the way I had when he was small and something had gone wrong at school.
"She'll contest the withdrawal of the claim," he said finally.
"Patricia expects that.
It won't go anywhere."
"The money.
I want to set up a repayment schedule.
Something formal.
Through Gerald."
"We can do that."
"All of it.
Every dollar." He looked at his cup.
"Dad set that up for you."
"Yes."
"I knew that." His voice was low.
"I told myself it didn't matter.
That you had enough.
That we needed it more." He shook his head.
"I was lying to myself."
"You were," I said.
Not unkindly.
Just honestly.
He accepted that.
Three days later, Patricia received a response from Sloan's attorney.
They were not withdrawing the claim.
They were, in fact, amending it — adding a new argument about improvements made to the property during occupancy.
Patricia called me while I was in the garden.
"This is a delay tactic," she said.
"They know the claim won't succeed.
They're trying to make the process expensive enough that you'll settle."
"What do you recommend?"
"We file our response, include the evidence of prior conduct — Curtis Farwell, Alan Pressley — and request that the court consider the pattern as relevant to bad faith.
We also file the financial complaint with the district attorney's office this week." A pause.
"I've spoken to Ray.
He's found a third name."
I stopped walking.
"A third man?"
"A Robert Hensley in Virginia.
Seventy years old.
Widower.
Lost his home entirely — sold it under pressure after Sloan moved in and began making his life very difficult.
He never connected it to a pattern.
He thought it was just bad luck." Patricia's voice was careful.
"He's willing to speak to investigators."
I stood in the garden with my hand on the fence post.
"She almost did this to me," I said.
"Yes."
"If I hadn't gone to the bank when I did—"
"But you did," Patricia said.
"And now Robert Hensley is going to be heard.
That matters, Lorraine.
That matters quite a lot."
After I hung up, I stood in the garden for a while.
The oak tree my husband had planted the year Harrison was born was dropping leaves in the light wind.
They fell slowly, one at a time, without any urgency.
Harrison came out the back door with his own cup of tea and stood beside me.
"Patricia?" he asked.
"There's a third man," I said.
"In Virginia.
She did this before.
Three times that we know of."
He was quiet.
"She could have taken everything," I said.
"The house.
The account.
All of it."
"I know."
"Your father's floor," I said.
"That's what he called it.
The sixty thousand dollars.
He said every woman deserved a floor no one could pull out from under her."
Harrison looked at the oak tree.
"He knew something was coming," he said.
"He hoped he was wrong."
Harrison set his cup down on the porch railing.
He looked like he was carrying something heavy and had decided to stop pretending he wasn't.
"I let her in," he said.
"I brought her here.
I gave her access to everything because she asked me to and I wanted her to be happy and I didn't ask the questions I should have asked."
"Yes."
"That's on me.
Not just on her."
"Yes," I said again.
He looked at me.
"How do you forgive something like that?"
I thought about it honestly.
"Slowly," I said.
"And not all at once.
And some days you don't."
He nodded.
That was the right answer, and he knew it.
May you like
The leaves kept falling.
We stood there together until the tea went cold.
