Chapter 3 - The Dublin Dilemma
The house in Muirfield Village, Dublin, was not the house Laura had left thirteen years ago.
It was larger, newer, and considerably more precarious.
At 7:45 AM, Eric Bennett sat at an island made of faux-Carrara quartz, staring into a stainless steel espresso machine that was currently displaying an error code: *E-04: Service Required.*
"Did you call the technician?" Vanessa asked, sweeping into the kitchen in a taupe silk robe that had cost four hundred dollars at the Easton Town Center three years ago. Her hair was still blonde, but the severe bob had been replaced by shoulder-length extensions that she touched constantly to ensure the seams were hidden.
"The technician charges two hundred dollars just to cross the county line, Van," Eric said, his voice flat. He rubbed his temples where his hairline had receded into two sharp, graying inlets. "It’s a gasket. I can order the part on Amazon for twelve bucks and swap it out with an Allen wrench."
"You said that about the pool heater, Eric. That was in June. The pool has been sixty-one degrees for four months, and the twins have had to do their swim team drills at the rec center like public school kids."
She poured herself a glass of alkaline water from the dispenser and leaned against the counter, her eyes narrowing as she looked at his laptop screen.
"Did Vance call back?"
"His associate called," Eric said, not looking up. "They served the notice of appearance by certified email to Sterling’s firm in Asheville. They’re drafting the petition for joint custody enforcement and an emergency injunction to freeze the escrow account."
Vanessa set her glass down with a sharp *clack*.
"How much did the article say it was?"
"Three point four million," Eric muttered. "The gallery takes forty percent, usually. Sometimes fifty. But even after commissions and capital gains, that kid is sitting on close to two million in clean cash. Two million, Van."
Vanessa’s lips thinned. She looked toward the hallway where twelve-year-old twins, Mason and Tyler, were currently screaming at each other over an iPad charger.
"Mason!" she shrieked, not turning her head. "Use the charger in the media room or neither of you gets screen time before the bus!"
The screaming stopped, replaced by the dull, thumping bass of an Xbox boot sequence.
"Two million," Vanessa repeated, her voice dropping into the low, conspiratorial purr she used when they were discussing their second mortgage. "Eric, you have legal joint custody. The 2011 agreement was never terminated. When she moved to North Carolina, the judge specifically noted that your parental rights remained intact. You have a right to be at that table. You’re his father."
Eric looked down at his coffee mug—a heavy white mug with the logo of his third logistics employer in seven years.
He didn't feel like a father. When he thought of Noah, he didn't picture a teenager who stood six feet tall and sold canvases to European shipping magnates. He pictured a four-year-old boy in an oversized gray sweatshirt who would scream for forty-five minutes if his bathwater was two degrees too warm, a boy who had looked through Eric as if he were an empty pane of glass.
"He doesn't know me, Van," Eric said quietly. "I haven't seen him since he was nine. That weekend at the Red Roof Inn in Charlotte... it was a disaster. He wouldn't leave the bathroom because the fluorescent lights were humming. He spent thirty-six hours with his coat on, drawing the emergency exit map from the back of the door."
"Because she trained him to be like that!" Vanessa snapped, stepping closer, her fingers digging into the fleece of his shoulder. "Don't you see what she did? She took him six hundred miles away, she cut you out of the school emails, she created this little hermetic freak show where she’s the saint and you’re the monster who abandoned them! And now she’s sitting on three million dollars generated by *your* son’s name—*Bennett*—while we’re refinancing the house for the third time to pay for Mason’s orthodontic surgery and your firm’s 'restructuring'!"
Eric closed his eyes. The word *restructuring* made his stomach drop.
Three weeks ago, the vice president of human resources at Apex Logistics had taken him to lunch at the Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Worthington. Over creamed spinach and an eight-ounce filet, Eric had been informed that his division was being consolidated into the Dallas office. He had sixty days to accept a severance package—twenty-two weeks of base pay—or relocate to Plano with a thirty percent cut in commissions.
He hadn't told Vanessa yet. He had spent the last twenty-one days driving to the suburban office park, sitting in his cubicle with the door closed, applying for director-level jobs on LinkedIn for which he was ten years too old and five certifications too short.
And then, yesterday morning, while drinking bad breakroom coffee, he had opened the *Tribune* app and seen the photograph.
The photograph wasn't of Noah. Noah didn't allow photographs.
It was a photograph of the canvas.
*Outside the House.* Eight feet wide. Oil, cold wax, and graphite on linen.
The composition was brutal in its clarity: a beige two-story suburban house viewed from the driveway at dusk. The garage door was open, spilling a cold, yellowish light across the concrete. In the doorway stood three figures—two adults whose faces were rendered as blurry, indistinct smears of pale ochre, and a small child whose back was turned. On the porch, painted with razor-sharp, photographic precision, were two olive-green suitcases.
And on the driveway, dropped near the edge of the grass, was a single, hyper-detailed Prismacolor pencil.
True Blue. 903.
The caption beneath the photo had read: *Seventeen-year-old North Carolina prodigy Noah Bennett shatters post-war contemporary records at Christie’s mid-season auction with $3.4M sale of semi-autobiographical masterwork.*
"She exploited him," Vanessa whispered, her breath warm against Eric’s ear. "She took a damaged kid and turned his trauma into a brand. That money doesn't belong to Laura. And it certainly doesn't belong in some offshore trust where she can spend it on five-thousand-dollar linen dresses while you work sixty hours a week to keep the heat on."
"Vance says if we file in North Carolina, we can demand an independent guardian ad litem," Eric said, his voice regaining some of its old, analytical cadence. "An independent evaluation of Noah’s capacity. If Noah is deemed legally dependent due to his autism, the court has to appoint co-conservators. Both parents."
"And co-conservators," Vanessa said, her eyes bright, "are entitled to reasonable fiduciary management fees. Standard is three to five percent of total assets under administration annually. Plus back-support adjustments for the relocation."
Five percent of three million was one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Every year. For the rest of Noah’s life.
Eric opened his laptop. He opened the PDF from Richard Vance.
May you like
"Tell the boys to get their shoes on," Eric said, clicking the digital signature line on the retainer agreement. "I’m driving down to Vance’s office in German Village. We file the emergency petition by noon."
***
