Chapter 38 - The Exile of the Prodigals
A week later, the moving vans arrived at the old house in Eugene—the house where Cassidy had lived in the smallest room while Donald occupied the entire second-floor master suite with his gaming setups and home gym.
Cassidy did not go inside. She sat in the driver’s seat of her truck across the street, watching the court-ordered liquidators carry out the furniture to satisfy the tax liens and the restitution judgment.
She watched Donald’s five-thousand-dollar leather sectional sofa being loaded onto the ramp. She watched the sixty-five-inch television he had bought with her stolen credit card being boxed and cataloged by the county bailiff.
Down the front walkway, Eleanor Vance walked carrying two small cardboard suitcases, her gait unsteady, her head bowed against the grey drizzle of the valley. A social worker guided her toward a state-subsidized transport van. Eleanor paused at the curb, turning her head toward Cassidy’s truck.
For five long seconds, mother and daughter looked at each other across the asphalt of the suburban street that had been Cassidy's prison for a decade. Eleanor’s face was a mask of bitter, uncomprehending grief—the grief of a woman who had gambled her daughter's soul to protect a worthless son, and had ended up with neither.
Eleanor did not wave. Cassidy did not roll down the window.
The social worker opened the van door, Eleanor stepped inside, and the vehicle pulled away into the Eugene traffic, leaving the front yard empty except for the foreclosure notice hammered into the dying lawn.
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Cassidy turned the ignition key of her truck, swung the steering wheel around, and headed west, toward the mountains, toward the ocean, toward the house where no one would ever tell her to be independent while stealing the ground beneath her feet.
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