Chapter 6 - The Deputy and the Eviction Notice
What followed was the most frantic, humiliating thirty minutes the Campbell family had ever experienced.
Under the watchful, unblinking eyes of Deputy Higgins, who stood on the front porch with his arms crossed over his tactical vest, Taylor and Morgan dragged bulging black trash bags down the gravel driveway, sobbing and cursing at the top of their lungs.
Denise, whose "crippling sciatica" seemed to have miraculously vanished under the threat of county jail, was furiously shoving designer handbags, half-empty perfume bottles, and Sasha's grandmother's silver-plated flatware into an oversized duffel bag.
"Put the flatware down, Denise," I said, leaning against the hallway doorframe.
Denise froze, her hand inside the china cabinet drawer. She whirled around, her face twisted in pure, unadulterated venom. "It's just old spoons, you miserable old crow!"
"Those spoons belonged to my mother, Sarah Miller," I said calmly. "Put them on the counter. If I see so much as a butter knife leave this house in your hands, Frank will add grand larceny to your paperwork. Put. Them. Down."
With a snarl of rage, Denise slammed the silver-plated velvet case onto the counter so hard the brass hinges cracked. She grabbed her duffel and waddled out the door, screaming curses into the morning air that would have made a sailor blush.
Inside the master bedroom, the confrontation was quieter, but infinitely more dangerous.
I walked down the hall and found Omar standing over Sasha’s antique cedar chest—the one my late husband had carved by hand for her sixteenth birthday. Omar had a pry bar wedged under the brass lock, his muscles straining as he tried to pop the wood.
"What are you doing, Omar?" I asked from the threshold.
Omar didn't stop. He gave one final, desperate heave. The antique brass latch snapped with a sickening splinter of ninety-year-old cedar.
Inside the chest was Sasha's emergency cash box—the envelope containing eight hundred dollars in cash she kept for vet bills and propane refills, along with her grandmother’s diamond engagement ring and her wedding band from her first marriage.
Omar reached into the chest and grabbed the velvet ring box.
"Leave it," a voice said behind me.
I turned. Sasha was standing there. She wasn't holding a broom or a dishtowel anymore. In her right hand, she held the twelve-gauge Remington pump-action shotgun that my husband had taught her to shoot when she was fourteen years old.
The action was racked back. A bright green shotshell was clearly visible in the open ejection port.
Omar froze, his hand hovering over the velvet box. His eyes shifted from the heavy black barrel of the shotgun up to his wife’s face.
"You wouldn't," Omar whispered, though his lower lip began to tremble violently. "You don't have the guts, Sasha. You’re weak. You’re a frightened little girl who needs someone to tell her when to breathe."
"Try me, Omar," Sasha said.
Her voice wasn't hysterical. It wasn't shaking. It was cold, hollow, and absolute.
"For eighteen months, I let you convince me that I was damaged goods," Sasha said, taking one slow, deliberate step into the bedroom. "I let you bring your mother into my kitchen to insult my cooking. I let your brother treat me like an unpaid maid. I let you put me on a cot in the sunroom of the house my mother broke her back to buy me, because I thought that if I just gave a little more, worked a little harder, stayed a little quieter, you would love me."
She raised the barrel two inches, pointing it directly at the center of Omar’s chest.
"Put the box down. Take your hands out of my chest. And walk toward the front door."
Omar swallowed hard. His face had gone from red to an ashen, sickly gray. Slowly, very slowly, he opened his fingers and let the velvet ring box drop back into the splintered cedar chest.
He raised both hands into the air, palms out, and began backing toward the doorway.
"You're making a mistake, Sasha," he whispered, his eyes darting frantically toward Deputy Higgins, who had just appeared in the hallway behind me. "We can get counseling. We can make them leave! We can start over, just the two of us!"
"Counseling won't fix what you are, Omar," Sasha said, lowering the shotgun to the low-ready position as Deputy Higgins stepped in front of her.
May you like
"All right, son," Deputy Higgins said, placing a heavy, gloved hand on Omar’s collar and spinning him toward the front porch. "You've had your thirty minutes. Time's up. Let's go."
---
