Chapter 4 - The Enablers Call
I didn't sleep. It was nearly 3:00 AM in Arlington, which meant it was 8:00 AM in London. I had to get dressed and go to a high-level corporate meeting, but my phone was already vibrating itself off the nightstand.
The caller ID showed "Mom."
I braced myself and answered. "Hello, Mom."
"Marissa Helen Keane!" my mother’s voice shrieked through the receiver, so loud I had to hold the phone inches away from my ear. "What have you done? What did you do to your sister?!"
"I didn't do anything to Paige, Mom. Paige did this to herself."
"She is in a jail cell! A jail cell, Marissa! In Fairfax County! They won't let us see her, and they took my grandbabies to some awful state home! They're saying she tried to rob a government official!" My mother was hyperventilating, her voice rising to a pitch of pure panic. "She told us you gave her the keys! She said you told her she could stay there because you were in Europe!"
"She lied to you, Mom," I said, keeping my voice as flat and emotionless as possible. "I have the text messages. I told her three weeks ago that the penthouse was sold. I told her again tonight, before she entered, that I didn't own it anymore. She ignored me, used a stolen utility code, broke in, and then tried to smash open a federal marshal's safe with a brass bookend."
"It's just an apartment!" my mother cried. "You have millions, Marissa! Why couldn't you just let her stay there? Why did you have to sell it to some... some government thug who would arrest a mother in front of her children? You did this on purpose to humiliate her!"
There it was. The classic Keane family logic. No matter what Paige did—whether she maxed out my credit cards, ruined my car, or, in this case, committed a federal felony—it was always my fault for not preventing it or for letting her face the consequences.
"I sold my property because it was mine to sell, Mom," I said. "And Reid Langford is not a thug. He is a Deputy U.S. Marshal who purchased my home legally. Paige broke into his house. She is thirty years old. She is an adult."
"You are going to call this marshal and tell him to drop the charges," my mother demanded, switching from sobbing to an icy, authoritative tone. "You are going to pay her bail, and you are going to hire her a lawyer. If you don't, your father and I are finished with you. Do you hear me? Finished."
The threat used to terrify me. When I was twenty-two, the idea of my parents cutting me off would have sent me into a panic. But now, at thirty, after years of paying for Paige's divorces, Paige's rent, and my parents' luxury vacations under the guise of "family solidarity," it felt different.
It felt like freedom.
"Then I guess we're finished, Mom," I said quietly.
"What?" she gasped.
"I am not paying her bail. I am not hiring her a lawyer. And I am not calling Reid Langford to ask him to compromise his professional integrity for a woman who just tried to rob him. If Paige wants to get out of jail, she can use her own money. Oh, wait, she doesn't have any, because she spent it all trying to look rich on Instagram."
"Marissa! How dare you—"
"Goodbye, Mom."
I hung up the phone. I sat on the edge of the hotel bed, my hands shaking, but for the first time in my life, a genuine smile spread across my face.
May you like
I blocked my mother’s number. I blocked my father’s number.
Then, I opened my laptop and emailed the security footage and the text screenshots to Reid Langford's official government email.
