Chapter 8 - The Kingdom Reclaimed“What are you saying?”
“I gave Tyler and Chloe thirty minutes,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “I’ll give you an hour. Pack your things, Dad. You chose your new family. Now, you need to go find them.”
“Harper, please! This is my home!” he begged, standing up.
“No,” I corrected him, turning my back on him for the final time. “This is my home. And you’re trespassing.”
Four months later, the Texas sun was beating down gently on the backyard.
I knelt in the soft soil, a pair of gardening shears in my hand, carefully pruning the dead wood away from Eleanor’s climbing yellow roses. They were blooming more violently than ever this year, a brilliant, vibrant yellow against the old white trellis.
Brenda had accepted a plea deal. She was serving a three-year sentence in a state penitentiary for felony forgery and fraud. From what I heard through Mr. Vance, Tyler was working the night shift at a gas station, and Chloe had moved into a cramped studio apartment with three roommates.
My father was living in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town, awaiting the finalization of a messy, deeply indebted divorce. He sent me a letter once. I didn’t open it. I buried it at the bottom of the trash can, right where it belonged.
I stood up, wiping the sweat from my brow with the back of my gardening glove. I looked at the back of the house. The windows were clean. The kitchen was quiet. There was no one waiting inside to demand rent, no one plotting to steal my future, no one making me feel small in the very place I was meant to feel safe.
I took off my gloves, picked up the watering can, and smiled as the cool water poured over the roots of the roses.
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I had survived the coup d’état. The kingdom was finally mine.
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