Chapter 5 - The Discovery at the Courthouse
Back in the city, the walls were literally closing in on Daniel and Vanessa.
By the end of the first week, the apartment looked like a disaster zone. Piles of unwashed dishes filled the sink and spilled onto the counters. Laundry baskets overflowed into the hallways. Ethan and Lily had caught mild colds from being passed around between panicked babysitters who charged exorbitant emergency rates, draining Vanessa’s savings account by hundreds of dollars a day.
Vanessa was furious, snapping at Daniel over every little thing.
“Find her!” Vanessa demanded on Saturday morning, slamming her car keys onto the kitchen table. “I don't care how you do it, Daniel, but find your mother! My mother is coming to visit from Chicago next weekend, and if she sees this pigsty, she will never let me hear the end of it!”
Daniel, unshaven and exhausted, rubbed his face with both hands. “I’m trying! I went to the bank yesterday, but they wouldn't give me any information without her authorization because the account is solely in her name.”
“Then use legal channels! Report her as a missing person!”
“She left a note saying she left voluntarily, Vanessa! The police won’t file a missing person report for an adult who packed her bags and walked out of her own free will!” Daniel shouted back, finally losing his temper. “And stop acting like she’s a maid you can summon back with a whistle! She’s my mother, and we drove her away!”
Vanessa stared at him, her eyes flashing with cold disbelief.
“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” she sneered. “I suppose I’m the one who yelled at her for being lazy? Wait... you didn't defend her either, Daniel. Don't act like a saint now. You were just as happy to let her do everything while you sat on your computer playing video games late into the night!”
Daniel flinched because he knew it was true. His silence had been his complicity.
“Just... give me the car keys,” Daniel muttered, turning away. “I’m going to check the county records office downtown. If she owns property anywhere in the state—like that old house in Monterey—there will be a public deed transfer or tax record.”
Two hours later, Daniel sat at a public computer terminal in the county records department, scrolling through digitized property deeds.
His heart hammered against his ribs as he typed in his mother’s full maiden and married names: Eleanor Vance.
For a long time, nothing came up under current active residences in the city.
Then he expanded the search to coastal counties.
Monterey County.
Property ID: #489-202-B.
Owner of Record: Eleanor Vance.
Status: Active. Tax payments current, paid in full annually via automatic bank transfer.
Daniel stared at the screen in utter shock.
The house hadn’t been sold to pay off his father’s debts ten years ago.
When his father passed away leaving behind a mountain of medical bills, Daniel had panicked, assuming the family was ruined. But his mother had quietly taken out a small private loan against her own inheritance, worked double shifts at the local community college library for three years, paid off every single cent of debt without telling him, and kept the Monterey house safely tucked away in a trust for her own future.
And she had never once thrown it in his face.
She had given up her own comfort to help Daniel buy his first car, put a down payment on his apartment, and bail him out of financial trouble time and time again—only to end up sleeping on a narrow cot in the corner of their living room, treated like an unwelcome servant.
Daniel felt the floor drop out from under him.
The shame that washed over him was so intense, so suffocating, that he had to grip the edges of the metal desk to keep from falling out of his chair.
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He didn't just lose a babysitter.
He had lost a mother who loved him more than he ever deserved.
