Chapter 12 - THE SUBPOENA IN THE DAHLIA BED
The first official sign that Evelyn had not retired to her bridge clubs and botanical society lunches arrived inside an envelope of cheap manila cardstock, wedged into the wire support of my newly planted dahlia tubers.
It had not come through the United States Postal Service. There was no stamp, no cancellation mark, no barcode.
The morning frost was still white on the lawn when I found it. The handwriting on the front was neither Evelyn’s calligraphic flourish nor Chloe’s frantic, jagged scrawl. It was typed in ten-point Courier on a laser printer with a failing drum, leaving a faint grey stripe down the margin.
*NOTICE OF INTENT TO PETITION FOR EMERGENCY NON-PARENTAL CUSTODY AND APPOINTMENT OF GUARDIAN AD LITEM.*
I stood in the dirt, the garden spade in my right hand, reading the thirty-two pages while the crows quarreled in the dead ash tree behind the coop.
Evelyn was not asking for a visit. She was not demanding an apology for the four months Chloe had spent in the county correctional facility awaiting trial. She had bypassed the criminal proceedings entirely and struck directly at the marrow.
The petition, filed in the neighboring district where the Sterling name still held sway over county judges who played nine holes with my late father, alleged that I was mentally unstable. It cited my "sudden, unexplained abandonment of the family estate," my "manifest paranoid ideations regarding food safety and personal security," and the "unsubstantiated fabrication of a violent domestic altercation" intended to alienate Waverly from her maternal kin.
Attached as Exhibit B was an affidavit signed by Chloe.
*“My sister has long suffered from hysterical episodes,”* the affidavit read, the words slick and cold as pond scum. *“On the night in question, she suffered an acute sensory breakdown in the foyer. In my effort to prevent her from harming herself or her daughter, a struggle ensued. My mother and I have attempted repeatedly to provide her with private residential psychiatric care, but she has fled with my niece into an unsafe, isolated rural environment without running utilities or proper medical oversight.”*
I lowered the paper. The spade felt light in my grip.
The cold didn't sink into my ribs the way it used to in the hospital room, where the scent of burnt roasted coffee beans had made me want to rip the IV cannula out of the back of my hand.
"Sarah," I said into the kitchen phone five minutes later.
"Did they serve you?" she asked before I could give her the docket number.
"Left it in the flower bed," I replied, setting the papers on the clean wooden table. "They didn't even use a registered courier. They had someone drive onto the property at dawn."
Sarah let out a slow, dry breath through her teeth. "Evelyn’s lawyer is Julian Vance. Have you heard that name?"
"No."
"He’s the man corporations hire when they want to bulldoze a wetland and the EPA won't take their phone calls. He doesn't bill by the hour; he bills by the carcass. He took this on contingency against your father's estate trust."
"My father's trust was liquidated five years ago," I said. "Chloe took the capital for her boutique gallery in Soho. There’s nothing left to contest."
"That’s what Evelyn told the probate clerk," Sarah said quietly. "Julian Vance doesn't take cases for old women unless there's marrow in the bone. Meet me at the county clerk’s office in forty-five minutes. Bring your father's original death certificate, the deed to the farm, and the audio drive from the emergency ward."
I hung up the receiver.
I walked to the pantry, packed Waverly two honey-crisp apples, a hunk of sharp cheddar, and a thermos of mint tea, and walked her over to Marcus’s workshop.
Marcus looked at the folder under my arm. He didn't ask what was inside. He simply set down his drawknife, reached behind the door, and took down his canvas field coat.
"She stays behind the iron stove until you're back," he said.
"Marcus—"
May you like
"I’ve got five cords of white oak to split today," he said, not looking at me as he tucked a pair of leather work gloves into his belt. "A child can sit on a stump and count chips just fine. Go do what you have to do to those town people."
***
