Chapter 5 - The First Domino Falls
The first blow landed on a Tuesday morning.
Garrick walked into his office,
ready to complain to his colleagues about his 'insane' wife and her 'thug' brother.
Instead,
he was met by two security guards and a cardboard box.
His keycard didn't work.
His login was disabled.
The HR director handed him a letter that detailed his violations.
'Cruelty to a recovering cancer patient.'
'Public endangerment.'
'Failure to uphold the values of the corporation.'
He was escorted out of the building in front of everyone he had spent years trying to impress.
His car,
a company-leased luxury sedan,
was repossessed in the parking lot.
He had to call a cab to get home.
But when he got home,
he found the locks had been changed.
Ethan’s lawyers were standing on the lawn,
the same lawn I had mowed with my own blood and sweat.
They handed him an eviction notice.
The house wasn't his.
It was held by a trust,
and the trust had decided that he was an undesirable tenant.
Miriam was already sitting on the sidewalk,
surrounded by her suitcases.
She was screaming about her rights.
She was screaming about the Lord's vengeance.
But the neighbors were watching from their windows,
the same neighbors she had tried to impress for a decade.
They weren't looking at her with pity.
They were looking at her with disgust.
The video of the lawn-mowing incident had been leaked to the local news.
It had gone viral.
The 'Christian' household was now a symbol of suburban horror.
I watched it all on a tablet from the safety of the hills.
I saw Garrick sit down on the curb next to his mother,
his head in his hands.
He looked like a broken man.
But I knew better.
A broken man has a heart that can be mended.
Garrick only had an ego that had been bruised.
"He’s going to call,"
I told Ethan.
"Let him,"
Ethan replied.
"The more he talks,
the more evidence we have for the divorce."
"Every plea for mercy is a confession of guilt."
"Every excuse is a nail in the coffin of his reputation."
I felt a coldness in my heart that I didn't recognize.
It was the coldness of justice.
It was the coldness of a woman who had survived the fire and come out as ice.
"I want to see them,"
I said.
"Not now,"
Ethan said,
his voice soft.
"When you're ready."
May you like
"When you can stand before them without feeling a single tremor of fear."
"That will be the day they truly lose."
