Chapter 18 - Fractured Loyalties
The legal dissolution took less than twenty minutes once the threats of criminal prosecution were laid plainly on the table. The attorney knew when a case was completely dead. He produced the mutual release documents, had Marcus sign with a hand that shook so violently the ink splattered, and witnessed Dad’s counter-signature.
The debt was erased. The liens were voided. The farm was secure.
As we walked out into the cool evening air of the suburban driveway, Carter stopped by the silver sedan. His mother stood on the front steps, watching him, a solitary, rigid figure framed by the white Grecian pillars of her empty house.
"Carter," Eleanor called out, her voice cracking slightly for the first time in her life. "If you leave with them, don't bother coming back to the office on Monday."
Carter didn't turn around. He walked over to Dad’s beat-up pickup truck, opened the rear door, and climbed in beside the baby's car seat.
"Let’s go home," he said, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
We drove back toward the countryside under a sky that had cleared of storm clouds, leaving behind a cold canopy of brilliant, indifferent stars. The tension that had held us all rigid for months began to drain away, replaced by an exhaustion so profound that nobody spoke for forty miles.
When we turned down our gravel lane, the headlights caught the weathered front of the barn. It was old, peeling paint in long strips, but the foundation stones were square, seated deep into the Ohio dirt where nothing Eleanor Sterling or Marcus VanderBerg owned could ever reach them.
Ben helped me down from the cab. His hands were warm, solid, grounding me back into reality.
"It’s over," I whispered, resting my forehead against his chest, breathing in the scent of cedar dust, old flannel, and night air.
May you like
"Almost," Ben murmured, kissing the crown of my head. "There’s still one thing we haven't done."
***
