Chapter 7 - The Eviction At Pelican Bay
Early Thursday morning, I pulled up to the Pelican Bay Family Resort in my SUV, accompanied by Carter Vance and two process servers.
The two free nights I had booked for my family had officially expired at 11:00 AM sharp.
I stood in the sunlit marble lobby near the indoor waterpark, watching the glass elevators descend from the penthouse suites.
Melissa stepped out first, pushing a luggage cart loaded with toys, damp towels, and cardboard boxes.
She looked exhausted, her hair pulled back into a messy bun, wearing cheap sweatpants instead of my silk robe.
Behind her walked Mom, carrying a crying toddler, while Kyle trailed behind with an ankle monitor clamped around his left leg, looking defeated and broken.
When Melissa saw me standing by the front desk, her jaw dropped in sheer fury.
"Did you come here to gloat?" she yelled, loud enough to make the vacationing families by the check-in desk turn around.
"Haven't you done enough? Kyle is on house arrest, our bank accounts are wiped out, and we have nowhere to go!"
"You have your own home, Melissa," I answered calmly.
"The bank issued a foreclosure notice this morning!" Melissa sobbed, breaking down into hysterical tears right on the lobby carpet.
"They're taking our house! We're homeless, Kendall! Are you happy now?"
Carter Vance stepped forward, handing a manila envelope to Kyle and another to Mom.
"These are formal restraining orders barring all of you from coming within five hundred yards of Ms. Whitcomb, her private residence, or her business holdings."
Mom looked at the papers, her hands shaking so hard she dropped them on the floor.
"Kendall, where are we supposed to sleep tonight? We don't have enough money for gas to get back to Raleigh!"
I walked over to Melissa and looked down at her.
"You wore my eight-hundred-dollar silk robe and demanded breakfast at five in the morning like I was your housemaid," I said, my voice cutting through her tears.
"You thought you could rob me blind and hide behind the excuse of family."
"I was desperate!" Melissa cried.
"Desperation doesn't excuse cruelty," I replied.
I reached into my purse, pulled out four one-way bus tickets to Raleigh, and dropped them onto her luggage cart.
"Your shuttle to the municipal bus terminal leaves in ten minutes. If you miss it, you walk."
Dad walked through the resort revolving doors just in time to hear my words.
He looked hollowed out, wearing the same wrinkled shirt from the country club the night before. His pride was completely gone, crushed under the weight of public humiliation and looming legal battles.
"Kendall," Dad whispered, his voice cracking. "Is there really no way to fix this?"
I looked at the four people who had spent my entire childhood telling me I wasn't enough, then spent my adulthood trying to steal everything I had built.
May you like
"The only way to fix this was for you never to have crossed my threshold," I said.
I turned on my heel and walked out into the warm coastal sunshine without looking back once.
