Chapter 9 - The Family Dinner Ambush
Friday evening smelled of rain. Heavy gray clouds hung low over the rooftops, darkening the streetlights before they had even turned on.
I left Lily with Sarah, my trusted next-door neighbor whose daughter was Lily’s best friend. I kissed Lily’s forehead, promised her we would make strawberry pancakes on Saturday morning, and drove across town to the modest brick home where I had grown up.
My parents’ driveway was packed. Greg’s black Yukon was parked on the left; my mother’s sedan was parked on the right. I pulled up against the curb, took a deep breath, and grabbed the thick leather portfolio from the passenger seat.
When I walked through the front door, the atmosphere inside the house was thick enough to choke on. The smell of pot roast lingered in the air, but the dining room table was completely bare—no plates, no silverware, no glasses.
Mom was sitting at the head of the table, clutching a crumpled tissue, her eyes red and swollen. Dad was sitting at the far end, his hands clasped tightly between his knees, staring fixedly at the wood grain of the floorboards.
Melissa and Greg sat side by side on the long bench. Melissa had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her jaw clenched so hard the muscles in her neck stood out like cables. Greg looked like a condemned man sitting before a firing squad.
As soon as the front door latched behind me, Melissa exploded.
"You absolute monster!" she screamed, leaping to her feet so violently that the wooden bench scraped against the baseboards. "You sent legal couriers to our house? In front of our neighbors? In front of Carter and Mason?"
"Sit down, Melissa," I said calmly, walking over to the table and setting my leather portfolio down on the polished wood.
"Don't you dare tell me to sit down in our parents' house!" she shrieked, her voice hitting a piercing, hysterical register. "You’re trying to evict us! You’re trying to make your own nephews homeless because of a ruined dress! Mom, look at her! Tell her what she is!"
"Melissa, please," Dad said, his voice cracking. "Sit down."
"No, Dad! I won't sit down! She’s been waiting for this for years! She’s always been jealous of me, jealous of Greg, jealous that we have a real family and she ended up alone! And now she’s using her money to destroy us!"
"Melissa," I said, unzipping the portfolio with a slow, deliberate slide of the brass zipper. "Shut your mouth."
The sheer coldness of my tone caught her off guard. She froze, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with shock.
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"You want to talk about family?" I asked, pulling out the first stack of documents and dropping them onto the center of the table with a heavy, deadening thud. "Let's talk about family."
***
