Chapter 3 - The Lights Go Out on Elmwood Drive
Saturday morning arrived with a thin crust of ice glazing the streets of Lakewood.
I woke up at 6:30 AM without an alarm. For the first time in four years, the crushing weight in the center of my chest was gone. It had been replaced by a cold, calculating adrenaline.
Simone was already awake, sitting at her kitchen island in a silk robe, sipping black coffee while scrolling through her tablet. When I walked into the kitchen, she slid a steaming mug toward me along with a plate of scrambled eggs and sourdough toast.
"Sleep?" she asked.
"Not a wink," I answered truthfully. "My brain is running spreadsheets."
"Good," Simone smirked, tapping the screen of her tablet. "Because your family's morning is about to get extremely complicated. Spectrum disconnected their modem at 12:05 AM. I ran a ping test on the Elmwood IP address. It's completely dead."
I took a sip of the hot coffee. "Brent probably didn't notice until 3:00 AM when his gaming lobby crashed."
Right on cue, at 7:12 AM, my smartphone on the marble counter began to vibrate.
The caller ID displayed *Brent*.
I let it ring until it went to voicemail.
Thirty seconds later, it buzzed again. *Brent*.
Then a text message pinged across the screen:
*Yo, what did you do to the Wi-Fi? My stream cut out in the middle of a tournament and the router says 'No Service.' Call the cable company and get it fixed. Tara’s kid is screaming because his tablet won't load Disney.*
I didn't reply. I took another bite of toast.
Two minutes later, my phone lit up with an incoming call from *Mom*.
Simone raised an eyebrow. "Going for the guilt trip early today."
I picked up the phone, swiped to answer, and pressed the speaker button. "Hello, Mom."
"Cassidy!" Mom’s voice was high-pitched, vibrating with frayed nerves. In the background, I could hear the television blaring static, a child wailing at top volume, and Dad shouting from another room about the furnace thermostat. "Cassidy, thank goodness you answered. The internet isn't working! Brent says the account is locked, and when he called customer service, they told him the service was disconnected by the primary account holder! Is there an error with your card?"
"There's no error, Mom," I said smoothly. "I canceled the service."
A dead silence fell over the line, punctuated only by the distant wailing of Tara’s four-year-old.
"You... you canceled it?" Mom’s voice dropped an octave, slipping from frantic to horrified. "Why on earth would you do that? You know your brother uses the internet for his work! And Tara just moved in last night! Little Leo needs his shows, Cassidy! He’s in a strange house, he’s upset, and we can’t even put a cartoon on for him!"
"If Brent needs internet for his 'work,' he can call Spectrum, give them his social security number, and pay eighty-nine dollars a month like every other thirty-five-year-old adult in America," I replied coolly.
"Cassidy Marie Miller!" Mom gasped, her maternal authority snapping into place like an old, worn whip. "You apologize right now! You do not speak about your brother like that! You are being childish and vindictive simply because your father and I had a mature conversation with you about your future!"
"A mature conversation?" I chuckled, a cold sound that made Mom falter. "Is that what you call telling me to move out on Thanksgiving after I spent four hundred dollars on your dinner?"
"We gave you until the end of the month!" Mom cried. "You stormed out like a spoiled brat! And now you're lashing out at this family! Your father’s back is spasming from the stress, Cassidy! He’s lying on the living room rug with a heating pad, and the power flickered twice this morning! Did you touch the electric bill too?"
"I removed my banking details from all utility accounts, Mom. The FirstEnergy bill is due on Wednesday. The water bill is due on Friday. And the eighteen-hundred-and-forty-five-dollar mortgage payment is due on Monday."
"You... you what?" Mom’s breath caught in her throat. I could hear the rustle of her housecoat as she turned away from the noise in the kitchen. Her voice dropped to a desperate, urgent whisper. "Cassidy, you can't do that. You promised! You promised when your father got hurt that you would hold this family together!"
"And Dad promised that the moment his worker's comp settlement cleared, every dime I gave you would be paid back," I whispered back, my voice trembling with suppressed rage.
The silence on the other end of the line was absolute.
Even the background noise seemed to vanish. Mom stopped breathing. For three full seconds, the only sound on the connection was the faint, rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in our front hallway.
"What... what are you talking about?" Mom choked out, her voice suddenly thin, fragile, and utterly devoid of its previous righteous indignation. "The settlement is still pending. The lawyers are still fighting the insurance company. You know how slow the courts are—"
"Stop lying, Mom."
"Cassidy—"
"Stop lying to me!" I roared, the dam breaking inside my chest. The four years of exhaustion, the unpaid overtime, the cold winter nights shivering in my bedroom because Dad kept the thermostat locked at sixty-two degrees while Brent ran space heaters downstairs—it all came pouring out like molten glass. "I know about the four hundred and ten thousand dollars! I know about the arbitration award in Columbus! I know about the trust in Brent's name! I know about the HELOC you used to buy Brent's truck and pay off his credit cards!"
Mom dropped the phone.
A loud clatter echoed through the speaker as the handset struck the kitchen linoleum. Distant shouts erupted in the background.
"Arthur! Arthur, get in here! Pick up the phone!" Mom shrieked from across the room. "She knows! Oh my god, Arthur, she knows about the trust!"
Heavy footsteps thudded across the ceiling. Dad’s gravelly voice rumbled, loud and furious. "What are you talking about? Who told her? Give me that damn phone!"
The receiver was snatched off the floor.
"Cassidy!" Dad’s voice bellowed into my ear, harsh and commanding. "Who have you been talking to? Have you been digging through my personal papers? That is private legal business! You had no right to go snooping into affairs you know nothing about!"
"I didn't have to snoop, Dad," I said, my voice dropping back into a terrifying, unnatural stillness. "Your greed was so sloppy you left the keys where a four-year-old child could find them."
Dad sputtered, momentarily knocked off balance. "That... that money has nothing to do with you! That was compensation for my bodily injury! For my pain and suffering! I worked thirty years in that distribution center, breaking my spine for this family, and when I finally get a settlement, you think you’re entitled to a handout?"
"A handout?" I let out a wild, disbelieving laugh. "I funded your life for forty-eight months! You stole eighty-eight thousand dollars from my checking account to pay the interest on a loan you took out to bail Brent out of debt! Grandma Florence left that house completely paid off! You didn't have a mortgage, Dad! You manufactured one to bleed me dry while you sat on four hundred grand!"
"You listen to me, you ungrateful little bitch," Dad snarled, the mask of the loving, injured patriarch slipping off entirely, revealing the snarling, entitled parasite underneath. "I am your father! Everything I do is to protect this family! Brent has a future to build. He’s starting a family now with Tara. He needed that credit cleared. You were doing fine! You have a corporate job, benefits, a pension! You didn't need that money!"
"I needed my life, Dad."
"You owe us!" Dad shouted, his voice cracking with rage. "We raised you! We fed you! We put clothes on your back for eighteen years! You think you can walk out of here, leave us with a twenty-two-hundred-dollar monthly nut, and just wash your hands of your blood? If that mortgage bounces on Monday, the bank will start foreclosure proceedings! Is that what you want? To put your mother on the street?"
"You have four hundred and ten thousand dollars in Brent’s trust, Dad," I said, looking out Simone’s window at the gray, freezing lake in the distance. "I suggest you tell your thirty-five-year-old golden boy to write a check."
"Cassidy, don't you dare hang up on—"
I pressed the red icon on the screen.
The call ended.
I stood there in the quiet kitchen, my hands shaking so violently that coffee sloshed over the rim of my mug, pooling on the white quartz island. Simone reached out, gently took the mug from my hands, and pulled me into a fierce, silent hug.
I didn't cry. The tears simply refused to come. There was no sadness left inside me—only the clean, sharp edge of war.
Ten minutes later, another text arrived.
Not from Dad. Not from Mom.
It was from Wren:
May you like
*Dad just smashed a coffee mug against the fireplace. He told Brent they have to find two thousand dollars by Monday or the bank will flag the trust. Brent is packing his truck. Cass, he's driving toward Lakewood. He knows where Simone lives.*
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