Chapter 6
The next two weeks were a nightmare.
Mark gave interviews to every local news station that would listen.
Called me a con artist, a predator, a thief who’d preyed on a helpless old woman.
He dug up every bad thing I’d ever done.
The time I’d been arrested for shoplifting bread when I was 19, desperate and hungry.
The eviction notice from the apartment I’d lost when my mom first got sick.
The fact that I’d been married before, briefly, at 21, and it had ended in divorce.
He twisted every fact to make me look like a monster.
Reporters camped outside the yellow house.
Outside the nursing home where my mom lived.
Shouted questions at me every time I left the cottage.
“Did you trick her into marrying you?”
“How much did you get from her?”
“Are you sorry she’s dead?”
My mom saw the news.
She called me crying, saying she was sorry, that it was all her fault, that if she hadn’t gotten sick I never would have married Evelyn.
I told her it wasn’t her fault.
That none of this was her fault.
But I started to believe Mark’s lies a little.
Maybe I was the monster he said I was.
Maybe I had taken advantage of Evelyn.
Maybe I didn’t deserve any of the good things she’d given me.
I started pulling away.
Stopped answering Lila’s calls.
Spent all my time at the cottage, alone, staring at the lake, thinking about giving it all up.
Let Mark have everything.
Just make the noise stop.
One night, there was a knock on the cottage door.
It was Lila.
She was soaking wet from the rain, holding a stack of papers, eyes blazing.
“Where have you been? Mr. Henderson has been trying to reach you for two days. The trial starts next week. We need you.”
I let her in, didn’t look at her.
“I’m not doing it.”
She froze.
“What?”
“I’m done. Mark can have the money. The cottage. The business. I’ll sign it all over. Just make him leave my mom alone. Leave me alone.”
Lila threw the papers on the table.
“Are you kidding me? You think Evelyn gave you all this so you could just roll over and let that thief take it? She fought for you. The least you can do is fight for her.”
“I don’t deserve it!” I yelled, finally looking at her. “I married her for her money! I counted down the days until she died! I’m exactly what Mark says I am! A gold digger! A liar!”
Lila stepped up to me, slapped me hard across the face.
I stared at her, shocked.
“Evelyn knew all that,” she said, voice shaking. “And she loved you anyway. She saw the man you are now. Not the scared boy you were then. You think she’d want you to give up? Let Mark win? Let him take the money she left for the shelter? The house she left for me? The future she bought for you and your mom?”
She picked up the photo album from the coffee table, threw it open in front of me.
“Look at these. Look at how happy she was with you. You think she was miserable? You think she regretted marrying you for one second? She told me once that the day you said ‘I do’ was the second best day of her life, right after the day she married Arthur.”
She pointed at a photo of me and Evelyn, sitting on the porch swing, me laughing, her head on my shoulder.
“You made her less lonely, Ethan. You gave her 18 months of joy she never would have had without you. You think that’s worth nothing? You think that makes you a monster?”
I stared at the photo.
I remembered that day.
It was warm, the end of summer.
We’d eaten watermelon, spit the seeds at each other like kids.
I’d forgotten how happy I’d been that day.
How for a few hours, I hadn’t thought about the debt, or the clock ticking down.
I’d just been… happy.
With her.
Lila sat down next to me, voice softer now.
“You’re not perfect. None of us are. But Evelyn loved you anyway. And I’m starting to love you too, you big idiot. You’re my brother now. Whether you like it or not. And family doesn’t run when things get hard.”
She held out her hand.
“So are you going to get up, and fight with me? Or are you going to sit here and feel sorry for yourself, and let Mark destroy everything she worked for?”
I looked at her hand.
Thought of Evelyn’s voice in the video.
Fight for each other. That’s what family does.
May you like
I took her hand.
“Okay. I’ll fight.”
