Chapter 8 - The New Tenant
The moving van arrived at the Wellesley estate on Saturday morning—not a luxury moving service with uniformed porters and climate-controlled trucks, but a modest, rented U-Haul driven by a tired-looking mover in a grease-stained hoodie.
I stood by the circular drive, my hands shoved deep into my coat pockets, watching two men carry out a pair of ornate gilt-framed mirrors that looked absurdly out of place against the falling snow.
Wallace walked out onto the grand front portico. He wasn't wearing his tailored wool overcoat; he had on an old, faded windbreaker that was too short in the sleeves, his shoulders slumped forward as if carrying an invisible boulder. He looked old—not distinguished-old, but beaten-old, the kind of old that comes from realizing every single thing you built your identity upon was built on borrowed sand.
He stopped at the top of the stone steps, looking down at me with eyes that were watery and red-rimmed.
"You’re really going to throw us out," he said, his voice raspy and defeated. "Your own flesh and blood."
"You threw me out when I was twenty-two, Wallace," I reminded him, stepping closer so the snow crunched beneath my boots. "You told me that if I couldn't bring prestige to the family name like Cecilia, I wasn't welcome at your table. I just finally decided to take you at your word."
Wallace swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his thin throat. "What are you going to do with the house?"
"I’m turning it into a community center," I said casually. "Or maybe a subsidized childcare cooperative for single parents in the district. They need the space more than you do."
Wallace flinched as if I’d struck him across the face with a riding crop. The irony of his grand, status-symbol estate being turned into a community center for the very people he had spent his life looking down upon was a blow he couldn't deflect.
May you like
"You're a cold man, Desmond," he muttered, turning away to shuffle back toward the darkened interior of the house.
"No, Wallace," I called out after him. "I’m just the landlord."
