Chapter 13 - The Beggars at the Gate
Three months passed like a dream.
Summer bloomed across the valley, turning our front lawn into a vibrant ocean of green. Maya had grown chubby, with bright hazel eyes and deep dimples that showed every time I made funny faces at her while feeding her a bottle. Nora had regained her weight, her cheeks flushed with health, her laughter ringing through the house every morning.
I was outside on a warm Saturday afternoon, finishing the installation of a white picket fence along the property line, when the sputtering choke of a dying engine caught my attention.
A battered, rusted 2008 sedan with a missing hubcap and a dented bumper pulled up to the curb just outside our driveway.
The doors opened, and Tessa and Brooke stepped out.
I stopped hammering. I stood up, resting the handle of the framing hammer against my thigh, my body instantly shifting into a guarded, rigid stance.
My sisters looked hollow. Tessa was wearing a stained uniform from a fast-food franchise, her hair greasy and unwashed. Brooke was wrapped in an oversized, dirty cardigan, looking thirty pounds thinner, dark hollows under her eyes. The arrogance and smug superiority they had carried like armor for years had been thoroughly crushed by reality.
"Ryan," Tessa said, her voice shaking as she stopped right at the asphalt edge of the street, careful not to place a single foot onto my gravel driveway.
"You are violating a court injunction," I said, my voice echoing across the quiet lawn like a gunshot. "You have sixty seconds to turn that car around before I call Officer Miller."
"Please, Ryan! Don't call!" Brooke sobbed, dropping to her knees on the public pavement, pressing her hands together in a desperate prayer. "Mom is gone! She met some truck driver online and ran off to Arizona two weeks ago! She cleaned out our joint checking account and left us with three months of unpaid rent on that trailer!"
"That's not my problem," I replied without a trace of emotion.
"We got evicted yesterday, Ryan!" Tessa cried out, tears washing streaks through her cheap makeup. "The sheriff put all our stuff on the street! We’ve been sleeping in this car for four nights! We don't have enough money for a motel room, we don't have gas, and we haven't eaten a hot meal in three days!"
"You should look into the county shelters," I said. "There’s one on 5th Street."
May you like
"A shelter?!" Tessa shrieked, a tiny spark of her old entitlement flaring up before instantly dying under my cold gaze. "We’re your sisters! You're living in a giant house on a massive lot! You have three spare bedrooms! Just let us stay in the basement for a month until we get our paychecks! We'll do the chores! We'll watch the baby!"
"You will never touch my child," I said, taking two slow, deliberate steps toward the property line. "And you will never step foot on this land."
