Chapter 3 - The Visitors from North Hills
The heavy summer storm that broke over the city on Thursday evening brought no relief from the heat; it simply turned the air into a thick, suffocating steam. I was sitting in the living room, reading a technical journal by the light of a single lamp, when the front gate intercom buzzed.
I glanced at the security monitor mounted by the door. Through the distorted, rain-streaked lens of the camera, I saw two figures standing under a single, broken umbrella. One was elderly, hunched against the wind; the other was Meredith.
I didn't open the door. I pressed the intercom button. "Who is it?"
"Richard, please," a frail, cracking voice came through the speaker. It was Eleanor, my former mother-in-law. A woman who had spent thirty years treating me like an unfortunate stain on her family’s social fabric. "Richard, let us in. It’s pouring. We just want to talk."
I hesitated for a moment, my finger hovering over the release button. Then, I remembered the cold, clinical efficiency of the new smart locks. They only opened for the people who belonged here.
"Audrey!" I called out toward the stairs. "We have guests."
Audrey descended the steps, her eyes instantly moving to the security monitor. Her expression didn't change. She walked over to the intercom, took the receiver from my hand, and pressed the talk button.
"Eleanor," Audrey said, her voice devoid of any familial warmth. "The court order explicitly states that Meredith is not permitted within one hundred feet of this property. If she does not step back to the sidewalk immediately, the automated security system will log a violation with the local precinct."
"Audrey, please!" Eleanor’s voice rose over the sound of the rain through the speaker. "I’m eighty-two years old! My roof is leaking in North Hills and the movers are coming tomorrow! We don't want the money! We just want to return something! Something that belongs to Richard!"
I looked at Audrey. She looked back at me, a slight nod indicating that she would allow it under strict conditions.
"Leave it on the porch," Audrey instructed. "Step back to the driveway gate. If you approach the door while it’s open, I will call the police."
We watched the monitor as the two women walked slowly up the porch steps. Meredith was carrying a small, heavy wooden box—an old oak chest that had once belonged to my father. It was the box where I kept my original engineering notebooks, the early hand-drawn schematics for the software patent that had eventually made me my fortune. When the packers had cleared the house, I assumed it had been lost or accidentally thrown into one of her boxes.
Meredith set the box down on the welcome mat. She stood there for a second, her face pressed close to the glass of the front door, trying to peer into the dark foyer. She looked exhausted, her skin grey under the yellow porch light, her clothes soaked through by the storm. She looked like a ghost trying to find a way back into a world that had completely forgotten her.
"Come on, Meredith," Eleanor rasped, tugging at her daughter’s arm. "They aren't coming to the door. Let’s go."
We waited until the two figures had retreated down the driveway and their old, dented sedan had pulled away into the rainy night before I opened the heavy front door.
The oak chest was damp from the blowing rain. I lifted it, its weight solid and grounding in my arms, and carried it into the study.
Audrey followed me, standing by the desk as I flipped the brass latches of my father’s box. Inside, resting on top of the old grid-lined notebooks, was a single handwritten letter on cheap notebook paper. It wasn't from Meredith. It was from Paulie Garris, dated three weeks prior from the county jail.
Richard, the neat, architectural script read. Your wife is a fool, but you already know that. She thought she was buying a pedigree when she bought my family’s name. She didn't realize that the only thing the Garris family ever produced was debt and beautiful liars. I’m giving you back your notes because they’re useless to me—the feds took everything else anyway. Tell Audrey she’s a better prosecutor than the ones the state hired. If my brother had actually raised her, she probably would have ended up in jail with me. She’s lucky she got the broke guy instead.
I read the letter twice, then handed it to Audrey. She scanned the lines, a small, wry smile appearing on her face.
"Is this supposed to be an apology?" I asked.
"No," Audrey said, dropping the paper into the shredder next to the desk. The machine whirred to life, reducing Paulie Garris's final words to neat, uniform strips of white confetti. "It’s a white flag, Dad. They know they’ve lost. Every single one of them."
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I looked down into the oak chest, running my fingers over the worn leather covers of my old engineering journals. The notes inside were twenty years old—the record of a young man working late into the night while his wife slept upstairs, dreaming of a life he couldn't afford. The software had changed the world, but the notebooks had remained here, a testament to the fact that nothing of value is ever truly lost if you have the strength to keep it safe.
"Go to bed, Audrey," I said, closing the chest. "We have a lot of work to do tomorrow."
