Chapter 5 - The Backlash
The moment the police report was filed, the storm truly broke.
My sisters didn't take the hint. Within forty-eight hours, my phone was bombarded with hundreds of text messages and voicemails. Not just from them, but from aunts, uncles, and distant cousins I hadn't spoken to in years. My mother had spun a web of lies, telling the entire extended family that Hannah and I were throwing her out on the street and trying to jail her over a "minor financial misunderstanding."
“How could you do this to your own mother, Marcus?” one text from my Aunt Cheryl read. “She raised you alone! You’re letting that woman ruin your family!”
“You’re a monster,” Brooke wrote. “If Mom goes to jail, her health will fail, and it will be your fault.”
I blocked every single number. When they tried to call Hannah, I changed her phone number entirely. We locked our social media accounts and barricaded ourselves in our apartment. The warehouse manager, a good man named Dave who knew how hard I worked, noticed my distraction and offered me a temporary shift change to daytime hours so I wouldn't have to leave Hannah alone at night.
One evening, a sharp knock echoed through our front door. Hannah gasped, freezing on the couch. I grabbed a heavy flashlight from the kitchen counter and approached the door, looking through the peephole.
It was Erin and Tessa. They looked disheveled, standing under the dim hallway light.
I opened the door only as far as the security chain allowed. "What do you want?"
"Marcus, please!" Erin cried, her eyes red. "The police came to Mom's place today. They questioned her. They said there's a warrant out for her arrest! You have to drop the charges, please! We're sorry about the kitchen, we're sorry about everything!"
"You're sorry because the consequences finally caught up to you," I said coldly. "Did you care when you were stealing my grandfather's legacy? Did you care when you left my pregnant wife crying on the kitchen floor?"
"Marcus, we have nowhere to go!" Tessa begged, stepping forward. "The landlord evicting Mom is finalizing the paperwork. We're going to be homeless!"
"Then I suggest you find a job," I said, my heart feeling like stone. "Just like I did. Goodbye, girls."
May you like
I shut the door on their pleading cries. I walked back to the living room, sat next to Hannah, and pulled her close. We listened to them beat on the door for another ten minutes until the apartment building's security guard finally escorted them off the premises.
Two days later, Darlene was arrested at a local diner where she was having breakfast. The state of Missouri charged her with felony identity theft and grand forgery.
