Chapter 5 - The First Shockwave
Ethan stared at the glowing screen for three full seconds, letting the phone ring its obnoxious tune. The caller ID—Dad—seemed to mock the fragile peace we were trying to rebuild in our living room. Without a word of hesitation, Ethan reached down, swiped the screen, and tapped the speakerphone icon before tossing the device back onto the coffee table.
"Dad?" Ethan’s voice was steady, hard as flint.
There was a tense, heavy pause on the other end of the line. When Richard finally spoke, his voice was laced with a palpable nervousness, shaking like a leaf in a gale.
"Son... your mother just found out what you did," Richard stammered, the background noise faint but chaotic—the sound of doors slamming and high-pitched frantic breathing.
Ethan didn't blink. "What exactly did she find out?"
Another long, agonizing pause followed. Richard cleared his throat, sounding like a man about to testify against a mob boss in court.
"She found the paperwork."
Ethan grew extremely still. It was the kind of stillness that preceded a natural disaster.
"What paperwork?" I asked, leaning forward on the couch, my hand still holding the ice pack to my bruised cheek. "Ethan, what is he talking about?"
Richard’s voice crackled through the speaker, filled with hesitation. "The... the documents concerning the house."
Before Ethan could answer, the background noise on the phone exploded. The muffled shouting suddenly tore through the speaker as Patricia hijacked the phone from her husband’s trembling hands.
"Give me that phone!" Patricia shrieked, her voice screeching through the tiny speaker with enough fury to shatter glass.
Only seconds later, Ethan was being yelled at directly by his mother, her tone stripped of any maternal warmth, replaced entirely by pure, unfiltered panic.
"You cannot do this! This is my home!" Patricia screamed, her breath hitching between words.
The calm on Ethan’s face did not waver by so much as a millimeter. He looked down at the phone as if listening to an annoying insect buzzing near his ear.
"No, Mom," Ethan replied smoothly.
Patricia went dead silent on the other end. The abrupt cutoff of her tirade was more startling than her screaming.
"What?" she whispered, her voice dropping into a dangerous, disbelieving register.
"You told my wife to take my daughter and get out of your house tonight," Ethan said, every word measured and deliberate.
"It is my house!" Patricia shrieked back, her panic bleeding through her defiance. "I’ve lived in this colonial for twenty-five years! My blood, sweat, and tears are in these walls!"
Ethan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed on the coffee table.
"No," he said.
Just one word. Simple. Absolute. And nothing else.
The tone of Patricia’s voice plummeted from furious rage into a sickening, chilling confusion.
May you like
"What are you talking about, Ethan? Stop playing games with me right now!"
Ethan turned his head, locking his eyes onto mine. At last, he prepared to disclose the ultimate secret—the one he had hidden from Patricia, from Madison, and from me since the very beginning of our marriage.
