Chapter 7 - The Fallout at the Hart Household
While I was stepping into the light of my new success, the Hart household was descending into absolute chaos.
According to a neighborly text I received from an old family friend who lived across the street from Mike—someone who had always pitied me—the driveway looked like a disaster zone. Mike’s trucks were immobilized because fuel cards were declined. Tyler was refusing to go to school, screaming and throwing things in his room because his friends had seen the tow truck haul away his Mustang.
My mother had reportedly suffered a mild panic attack and had to be checked by paramedics, though she stubbornly refused to go to the hospital, choosing instead to sit on her floral couch and dial my blocked number over and over again.
They had expected me to be a doormat forever. They had believed that my grief made me weak, that my silence was an open invitation to walk all over me. They never anticipated that a person who has survived the worst kind of grief—the loss of a child—no longer fears petty cruelty or family ostracization.
Mike drove to my house later that afternoon. Through my smart doorbell camera, I watched him pound furiously on my front door, red-faced and shouting threats about lawsuits.
I didn't even get up from my office chair. I simply tapped the microphone icon on my phone app and spoke clearly:
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“Mike, if you don’t leave my property right now, I will press charges for harassment and send Detective Vance the audio of your financial threats. The police station is only five minutes away.”
The color drained from his face through the camera lens. He stared at the doorbell camera in utter disbelief, cursed loudly into the empty air, turned around, and stomped back to his truck.
