Chapter 20
Chapter 20: The Uninvited Guest
The peace didn't last. Two weeks after Robert’s letter, I arrived home from work to find a figure sitting on my porch steps. For a terrifying second, I thought it was a replay of the night Carter showed up with his garbage bags.
But this person was older, smaller, and looked entirely withered. It was Janet.
She was wearing a faded coat that looked like it had come from a thrift store, and her hands were trembling. The fierce, terrifying matriarch who had slapped her palm against my security screen a year ago was gone. In her place was a broken, desperate old woman.
I stayed in my car, locking the doors, and rolled the window down just an inch. "Janet. You are violating the civil restraining order. Leave now, or the police will be here in three minutes."
Janet stood up unsteadily, walking toward the car. She didn't look angry; she looked defeated. "Claire... please. Just look at me. I’m seventy-two years old. I’m living in a place with no central heating. Sabrina won't speak to me because she blames me for her record. Carter won't answer my calls."
"You made your choice, Janet," I said, my voice deadpan. "You signed the paper. You stole from your granddaughter."
"We were desperate!" she wailed, pressing her wrinkled face close to the glass. "Robert’s business was a house of cards! We thought if Carter went to an Ivy League, he could network, make wealthy friends, and save us all! It was a plan to save the whole family!"
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The sheer absurdity of their delusion was breathtaking. They sacrificed Anna's concrete reality for a fantasy where an eighteen-year-old boy would magically become a billionaire and rescue them from their own financial crimes.
"Goodbye, Janet," I said. I shifted the car into reverse, backed out of my own driveway, and dialed the non-emergency police line. I didn't care how pathetic she looked. A viper with broken fangs is still a viper.
