Chapter 2 - THE STORAGE UNIT

The drive back to the house was a blur of adrenaline and dread. Janet drove her black sedan, while I sat in the back seat with Leo, holding him tightly against me. He had fallen asleep, exhausted from fear and cold, his small fingers still wrapped around my mother’s rosary.

When we pulled into the driveway, Diane’s car was parked haphazardly on the lawn. All the lights in the house were blazing.

“Stay here with him,” Janet instructed, putting the car in park.

“No,” I said, gently resting Leo’s head on a travel pillow. I locked the back doors from the inside with the child locks engaged. “This is my family. I’m doing this.”

Janet nodded once, and we walked up the front steps side by side.

I pushed the front door open. The house looked like a hurricane had hit it. Drawers were pulled out in the hallway. Framed family photos were smashed on the hardwood floor.

“Diane!” I yelled.

“In here!” she called from the dining room.

Janet and I walked in. Diane was standing next to the heavy oak dining table. Spread across the wood were dozens of documents, bank statements, and legal files. In her hand was a roaring butane lighter.

She was burning them in a metal trash can.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, rushing forward.

Diane looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair wild. When she saw Janet standing beside me, she froze.

“What is she doing here?” Diane sneered. “The house isn’t yours to sell anymore, Janet. I found a cash buyer.”

“I’m not a realtor, Diane,” Janet said, her voice dripping with venom. “My maiden name was Janet Miller. Arthur Miller was my husband. The man whose firm you robbed nineteen years ago.”

Diane’s lighter slipped from her fingers, clattering against the hardwood floor. She took a step back, bumping into the wall.

“I know the truth,” Janet continued, stepping closer. “I have the checks. I have Thomas’s letter. You let your brother take the fall for your crime. You let my husband die thinking he failed his family.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Diane shrieked, pressing her hands to her ears like a child. “I was twenty-two! I was in debt to bad people! I just needed a little money to get them off my back, but it spiraled! Thomas was supposed to fix it! He was the accountant!”

“So you destroyed his life?” I yelled, tears of rage burning my eyes. “You forced him to run away? And what about four years ago, Diane? What did you do to Thomas when he came back sick?”

Diane let out a bitter, ugly laugh. “Sick? He wasn’t sick, Rebecca. He was dying. Liver failure. He came crawling back here begging Mom to take his bastard kid because his wife had died in a car wreck.”

“And you wouldn’t let Mom help him,” I said, disgusted.

“If Mom took the kid, she would have rewritten the will!” Diane yelled, pointing a trembling finger at me. “She would have given that little brat half the house! I sacrificed my whole life taking care of Mom while you moved to the city to play interior designer! This house is MINE!”

“Where is Thomas, Diane?” Janet asked, her hand slipping into her coat pocket where the gun rested.

Diane looked at Janet, then at me. A cruel, victorious smile twisted her lips.

“You think I killed him?” Diane laughed, though it sounded hysterical. “I didn’t kill him. I dropped him off at the door of the county charity hospital. Under a fake name. He slipped into a coma three days later.”

My heart stopped. “A coma?”

“He’s a vegetable, Rebecca. John Doe in Bed 4 at St. Jude’s Long-Term Care. Mom paid his medical bills in secret to keep him on life support, just waiting for a miracle that’s never going to happen.”

Diane reached onto the table and picked up a manila folder. “And yesterday, as my mother’s legal next-of-kin, I signed the paperwork to pull the plug. They’re taking him off the machines at midnight.”

I looked up at the grandfather clock in the hallway.