Chapter 8 - The Desperation of the Disowned
Across town,
in a motel that smelled of stale cigarettes and regret,
Mason and Harper were unraveling.
I knew this because Harper had started calling me,
trying to play the "concerned daughter-in-law" card.
“Eleanor,
please,”
she had sobbed into my voicemail.
“Mason is a mess.
He’s not eating.
He’s not sleeping.
We’re staying in a place where the door doesn't even lock right.
How can you do this to your own blood?”
I listened to the message three times,
marveling at the hypocrisy.
They were staying in a cheap motel because they had spent their savings on "phase two" of their plan,
expecting a quick payout from my estate.
They had gambled on my "stupidity" and lost.
I imagined them in that cramped room,
snarling at each other as the walls closed in.
Mason,
who had never worked a day of hard labor in his life,
would be looking for someone to blame.
And Harper,
who had married him for the comfort she thought I would provide,
would be realizing she had hitched her wagon to a dead horse.
I received a text from an unknown number an hour later.
It was a photo of Mason,
looking haggard and thin,
sitting on the edge of a bed.
The caption read:
Is this what you wanted? To see your son suffer?
I didn't reply.
I knew it was a tactic.
It was emotional terrorism,
designed to make me break the restraining order and reach out.
If I contacted him,
I gave his lawyers ammunition.
I gave him a foot in the door.
I went back to the garden I had started behind the farmhouse,
digging my fingers into the cool,
dark earth.
The physical labor was a balm for my frayed nerves.
I planted tomatoes,
peppers,
and herbs,
tending to them with a focus I hadn't felt in decades.
Life was simple here.
You water the plant,
it grows.
You neglect the plant,
it dies.
Mason was a weed I had watered for too long,
allowing him to choke out everything else in my garden.
Now,
I was letting him wither in the sun.
It was cruel,
perhaps.
But it was also natural.
I looked at my hands,
stained with dirt and calloused from the shovel.
These were the hands of the woman who had cleaned houses to buy him a bicycle.
These were the hands of the woman who had sewn his graduation gown.
And these were the hands that would now build a wall so high he could never climb over it.
I went inside and made myself a cup of tea,
the steam rising in the quiet kitchen.
May you like
I was no longer waiting for the phone to ring.
I was waiting for the harvest.
