Chapter 6
My parents were standing on the sidewalk in front of their own house, shivering in the cold, surrounded by a few garbage bags of clothes the sheriff had allowed them to collect. My father was on the phone, desperately trying to reach Mason, who was not answering.
My mother’s phone buzzed.
She pulled it from her coat pocket.
First, she looked at the photograph of the house.
Then she zoomed in on the photograph of the legal document.
She read the name.
Harper Lynwood, Esq.
According to the property manager, my mother did not scream.
She did not cry.
She made a small, broken sound, as if all the air had been knocked out of her at once.
Then her knees gave way.
She dropped the phone on the concrete and fainted right there on the sidewalk, falling into my father’s arms.
Five minutes later, my phone started ringing.
It was my father.
I watched his name flash on the screen.
I let it ring until it went to voicemail.
He called again.
Then again.
On the fourth try, I answered.
“Hello, Richard.”
I did not call him Dad.
“Harper,” he shouted into the phone. His voice was frantic, cracking at the edges. “Harper, what is this? Tell me this is some kind of mistake. Are you the lawyer handling our house?”
“I’m not just handling it, Richard,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I expedited it.”
There was a silence.
“My firm bought your defaulted mortgage for pennies,” I continued. “You owe more than $600,000. Since you could not pay, we took the collateral.”
“You evicted us?” he said.
His voice broke on the word.
“Your own parents? We are on the street, Harper. Your mother just collapsed. How could you do this to your family?”
“You did not seem concerned with family six months ago,” I said, “when you skipped my law school graduation to attend a party for Mason’s unfinished app.”
“Harper—”
“You told Mom to say you had to support Mason’s real business instead of my little degree.”
He said nothing.
“Well, Richard,” I said, “this is what my little degree does.”
There was a heavy, suffocating silence on the other end of the line.
For the first time in my life, I could hear him understanding me.
Not as a daughter.
Not as a child.
As power.
“Harper, please,” he said, and all the arrogance was gone from his voice. “We lost everything. Mason’s app failed. He lost the money. We don’t have anywhere to go. You have to stop this.”
“No.”
“You’re a powerful lawyer now,” he said quickly. “You can give us the house back. We’re your parents.”
“No,” I said. “You are Mason’s parents. You funded his delusion with the roof over your head. I am simply the corporate liquidator cleaning up the mess he left behind.”
He started crying.
My father, who had once told me not to become a difficult woman, was crying into the phone because I had become exactly difficult enough to win.
“The house goes to auction next week,” I said. “Have a nice life, Richard.”
May you like
Then I hung up.
And I blocked his number.
