Chapter 8 - The Arizona Departure
True to her word, Eleanor Vance never called back.
Ten days after that phone call, local real estate notifications confirmed that the Elmwood Drive property had officially closed escrow. Moving vans had arrived at dawn, loading up decades of expensive furniture, curated art pieces, and carefully maintained facades.
According to an update from Uncle Arthur—who had quietly reached out to Mason to apologize for his own cowardice during the birthday incident—Janet and Richard had packed their Lexus and driven south toward Scottsdale, trading their lifelong social standing in our suburban town for a gated retirement community in the desert.
They didn't call to say goodbye. They didn't leave a note. They simply vanished into the dry Arizona heat.
And for our family, their departure felt like the clearing of a heavy summer storm. The air smelled cleaner; the horizon looked brighter.
To celebrate the true beginning of our new chapter, Greg planned a surprise weekend getaway for the five of us in early November. We rented a cozy, sprawling log cabin nestled deep in the pine-covered hills of the nearby state park, complete with a massive stone fireplace, a wrap-around wooden porch, and an outdoor hot tub.
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It was the first vacation we had taken where we didn't have to schedule around holiday visits to Janet and Richard’s house. There were no polite, tense phone calls trying to coordinate Thanksgiving schedules. There was no anxiety about whether Janet would buy Amber an expensive designer coat while handing June a cheap plastic dollar-store toy.
Everything was balanced, peaceful, and entirely our own.
