Chapter 3 - The Ghost Town Awakening
Back in the high-rise condo, Mark stood in the foyer clutching his ringing smartphone. The front desk surveillance tape had ripped away any delusion he clung to: his own mother had driven the getaway car. His phone vibrated relentlessly in his palm.
When Diane’s line went dead after telling him she helped Claire survive, Mark felt an eruption of blind fury. He stormed back into the master bedroom, kicking a laundry basket across the polished hardwood floor. “How dare she?” he muttered aloud to the empty walls. “How dare she take my daughters from this home?”
He dialed his managing partner, Julian Vance, but Julian was undoubtedly sleeping off the holiday revelry. Next, he called Vanessa. She answered on the fourth ring, her voice thick with sleep. “Mark? What time is it? Did you leave your watch at the hotel?”
“Vanessa, Claire left,” Mark barked, pacing between the granite counters of the kitchen. “She took the girls, cleaned out their clothes, and took off with my mother. She left a note mentioning Rebecca Sloan.”
Vanessa fell silent for several seconds before letting out a sharp, calculating breath. “Rebecca Sloan? Mark, Sloan is a shark. She specializes in high-asset divorces and domestic abandonment cases in Cambridge. Did Claire find out about last night? Did you leave anything behind?”
Mark glanced toward the kitchen island. His iPad was sitting on the charger, its screen dark. His heart seized. He picked it up, unlocking it to see the unread messages, but then noticed the screen angle had been altered slightly. The greasy smudge of a fingerprint across the glass confirmed his worst nightmare. “She saw your messages,” he whispered hoarsely.
“You idiot!” Vanessa hissed through the receiver. “If she presents that to the board or during a deposition, my name gets dragged into your divorce mess! My junior partnership review is next month! You fix this right now, Mark. You find out where she is, play the remorseful husband, and get her back under control before she files an emergency custody petition!”
Vanessa hung up abruptly. Mark threw the phone onto the sofa. His life, perfectly structured around wealth, prestige, and control, was unravelling in real time. He poured himself a glass of expensive bourbon at 7:00 in the morning, trying to calm his shaking hands. He convinced himself this was just a temporary tantrum. Claire had no money of her own—she had paused her career as an architectural designer when the twins were born. Her parents were deceased, and she had no siblings. Without his income, how long could she possibly survive? She was staying at Diane’s home in Concord, surely.
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Twenty minutes later, Mark was behind the wheel of his luxury sedan, speeding west along Route 2 through slush and falling snow toward his mother’s suburban estate. The arrogance that had fueled him for years whispered in his ear that Claire would fold within forty-eight hours once she realized what single motherhood on a limited budget actually felt like. He would offer her an apology, blame the hotel incident on business stress and alcohol, buy her a designer handbag, and bring them all back under his roof.
He pulled up the winding driveway of Diane’s colonial home in Concord at 8:15 a.m., tires crunching violently over gravel. He didn't bother knocking; he used his childhood key to unlock the front door and marched directly into the foyer. “Claire! Pack the girls' bags. We’re going home right now!”
