Chapter 6 - THE COLLAPSE
While the deal with Aura Pure was being finalized under strict non-disclosure agreements, the house of cards built by Rosalind and Jolene was completely collapsing.
The summer drought had decimated Rosalind’s Oak Ridge development. The lending bank, First Midwest Capital, declared her primary construction loan in default after she missed three consecutive payment deadlines. The total liability hanging over her head was thirty-two million dollars.
To cover her mother’s debts and keep her cosmetics plant from bankruptcy, Jolene had illegally taken out high-interest short-term loans, using her company’s intellectual property and inventory as collateral.
When the news broke that Jolene’s "pure organic spring water" was actually municipal tap water hauled in by emergency tanker trucks—and contaminated with industrial iron from old tanks—her key retail partners dropped her instantly. Sephora and department store chains pulled her products off the shelves nationwide, demanding tens of millions in refunds and damages for fraud.
The Vance empire wasn't just crumbling—it was being erased from existence.
I was sitting in the executive suite of a high-rise hotel in downtown Wichita, wearing a tailored charcoal-grey suit, when my personal phone rang.
It was Rosalind.
I let it ring three times before answering. “Hello, Rosalind.”
“Lenora!” Her voice was completely stripped of its former icy elegance. It was frantic, high-pitched, and trembling with panic. “Lenora, thank God you answered! You have to help us! The bank is foreclosing on the sunroom, the main estate, everything! They’re putting our family home up for public auction next week!”
“I know,” I said, sipping my espresso. “It was in the public legal notices yesterday.”
“Lenora, please!” she sobbed—actual, real tears, the first time in my thirty-two years of life I had ever heard her cry. “Jolene is facing criminal fraud investigations! Your father is having chest pains! They are going to take everything from us! We have nowhere to go!”
“Why are you calling me, Mother?” I asked, using the word Mother for the first time in months. “You told me I was an absolute mistake. You said I threw away my life for a rotting wooden barn in the middle of nowhere.”
“I was wrong!” she shrieked desperation leaking through every word. “I was wrong, Lenora! I’m your mother! Families forgive each other! You must have some savings left from your truck job—or maybe you can take a loan against that land! We need four million dollars by Friday to stay the foreclosure order!”
“Four million dollars,” I repeated softly.
“Yes! Just four million! It’s nothing compared to what we’ve lost! Please, Lenora, save your family!”
I stood up from my desk and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the Wichita skyline.
“Do you remember my tenth birthday, Rosalind?” I asked quietly.
“What? What does that have to do with anything?!”
“I won first place at the county fair for my cherry pie,” I said, my voice steady and clear. “I brought that blue ribbon home because I wanted you to look at me and be proud. You took it out of my hand and threw it in the trash with the dirty coffee grounds. You told me I was wasting your time.”
“Lenora, that was twenty-two years ago!” she pleaded.
“And five days ago, you disowned me and left everything to Jolene,” I continued. “You didn't care if I starved in that rotting farmhouse. You didn't care if I froze to death in the Kansas winter. You only care now because the floor beneath your feet has finally given way.”
“Lenora, please—”
May you like
“Goodbye, Rosalind.”
I hung up the phone. I didn't block her number. I wanted her to be able to reach the voicemail of the daughter she had thrown away, while she watched her life work get auctioned off on the county courthouse steps.
