Chapter 9 - Uprooting the Weeds
The next seventy-two hours were an exorcism of labor.
We didn't sleep in the house that first night; we drove back to my small apartment in town, took hot showers, and ate simple bowls of chicken noodle soup in silence. But at seven o'clock on Sunday morning, we were back at County Road 14 with three boxes of heavy-duty contractor trash bags, five gallons of pine-scented floor cleaner, two industrial scrub brushes, and a toolkit.
The first thing we did was strip the master bedroom down to the bare walls.
We dragged the king-sized mattress—the one Denise had slept on for three weeks—out into the back pasture. We didn't donate it. We didn't sell it. Sasha soaked it in kerosene and tossed a road flare into the center of the batting.
We stood by the timber fence and watched the black smoke billow up into the blue North Carolina sky, carrying away the scent of cheap vanilla perfume and domestic tyranny.
"That felt good," Sasha said, leaning against the fence post, a smudge of soot across her forehead.
"Felt even better watching the springs warp," I agreed.
Next came the living room.
I took a crowbar and carefully pried the garish flat-screen television from the wall. We carried it out to the barn and locked it in the tack room; under North Carolina law, we had to hold any left-behind property of significant value for fourteen days before declaring it abandoned, but Omar would have to send a sheriff's deputy to retrieve it. He wouldn't get within fifty yards of this porch himself.
Sasha mixed spackle and patched the torn plaster where the drywall anchors had ripped through the wall. Then we spent the entire afternoon sanding the antique coffee table. We worked side by side, our sandpaper moving in long, rhythmic strokes with the grain of the heart pine, until the white water ring caused by Taylor’s soda can was completely erased, revealing the deep, honey-gold timber beneath.
On Monday morning, Donald Vance called my cell phone.
*"Martha?"* Donald's booming, aristocratic voice echoed through the speaker. *"I just received a rather hysterical telephone call from a young attorney in Raleigh claiming to represent one Omar Campbell. He was blustering about marital assets, quantum meruit improvements to real property, and demanding an immediate settlement of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to avoid a civil trial."*
I chuckled, resting my hip against the yellow kitchen counter. "What did you tell him, Donald?"
*"I told him,"* Donald replied with relish, *"that if his client filed so much as a single preliminary motion in Alamance County Superior Court, I would personally deliver four certified copies of Mr. Campbell's bank records to the State Department of Revenue, along with an audit showing that Mr. Campbell has claimed the homestead property tax exemption on three separate rental properties in Wake County that he doesn't own. I gave the young man ten minutes to withdraw his representation before I contacted the state bar association."*
"And?"
*"The young man withdrew five minutes ago,"* Donald said with a dry chuckle. *"Omar is on his own, Martha. I’ve already drafted the absolute divorce complaint based on domestic abandonment and financial fraud. We'll have him served at his mother’s apartment in Charlotte by Wednesday. He won't get a nickel. Not one red copper cent."*
When I hung up the phone and told Sasha, she was standing by the open kitchen window, hanging clean, white linen curtains she had sewn herself.
She paused, her hands resting on the brass curtain rod, and looked out across the five acres.
The apple trees were beginning to drop their last leaves, preparing for the winter sleep. The chicken coop was repaired, with six new pullets scratching happily in the fresh straw Sasha had bought that morning at the feed store.
"It’s really over, isn't it, Mom?" she asked.
May you like
"It’s over, baby," I said. "Now your life actually starts."
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