Chapter 14 - Cold Water
At midnight, I walked down to the creek at the southern boundary of the property. The water ran clear over black river stones, murmuring the same indifferent tune it had sung when Paige and I were children catching crawdads with bacon rind on string.
Ben found me there, as he always did. He sat beside me on the damp bank, tossing a flat shale stone across the ripples. It skipped three times before sinking.
"Dad found something in the tool shed," Ben said quietly.
"Another spare carburetor?"
"A ledger. From twelve years ago. When your mother had the stroke."
I turned my head to look at him through the gloom. "What does Mom’s illness have to do with Marcus VanderBerg?"
"Eleanor Sterling’s late husband was the county probate judge who handled the medical lien on this farm," Ben explained, his voice thick with a quiet anger. "Arthur didn't lose the lower twenty acres to bad weather, Emily. He lost them because the Sterling family trust foreclosed on the equipment note when your father missed two payments during your mother's chemotherapy."
I stared at him, my breath catching in my throat. "Eleanor has been holding paper on my family for over a decade."
"And that’s why Carter ended up with Paige," Ben continued. "It wasn't an accident that Paige met Carter at the country club charity drive. Eleanor hand-picked her. She wanted a daughter-in-law who was desperate for social standing, someone she could manage. Someone who would sign anything as long as the stationery had embossed foil."
The pieces fell together with a sickening, mechanical precision. Marcus VanderBerg wasn't just a rogue wedding coordinator with delusions of grandeur. He was Eleanor Sterling’s preferred private contractor—a lifestyle broker who laundered family debts through televised luxury weddings and promotional write-offs.
"They aren't just trying to collect fifty thousand dollars for a canceled party," I realized, the cold water splashing against my sneakers as I stood up. "They’re trying to trigger a default on the farm’s secondary mortgage."
"Dad already called his old union attorney," Ben said, rising with me, his arm sliding around my shoulders. "The lawyer told him that if Marcus files the lien tomorrow morning at the county courthouse, the bank will freeze Arthur's operational credit by Friday noon."
"We have thirty-six hours," I said.
May you like
"Thirty-six hours," Ben agreed, "to tear Marcus VanderBerg’s entire empire down to the floorboards."
***
