Chapter 6 - The Uninvited Guest
The salt air off Cannon Beach usually smelled like cedar shavings and wild blackberries, but this morning, it smelled like cheap cigar smoke and panic.
I was kneeling near the porch steps with Barnaby, fastening my heavy leather gardening gloves, when a dark gray sedan with Arizona rental plates crunched up the gravel driveway. The vehicle parked haphazardly over the wild sea oats at the edge of the lawn.
My spine stiffened before the driver’s door even swung open.
My father climbed out. He looked older, gaunt, his collar frayed around a neck that seemed too thin for his coat. But the stubborn, defensive tilt of his chin was unchanged. He took off his sunglasses, wiping moisture from his temples, and looked at the cedar cottage with an expression of sharp assessment—the same calculating gaze he used to cast over investment properties.
"Amelia," he called out, his voice thin against the pounding surf. "You don't make it easy to find you. Your attorney stonewalled us for nine months."
Barnaby let out a low, vibrating growl from deep in his chest. I laid my hand flat against the dog’s ribcage, keeping my voice dead even. "You’re trespassing on private property, Arthur."
Not Dad. Never again.
He flinched as if struck, but forced a brittle, salesman’s grin. "Arthur? Come on, Amelia. Don't be cruel. We drove up from Scottsdale. Three days on the road. Your mother is sitting down at the diner in the village, crying into her tea because she was terrified you’d slam the door in our faces. We need to talk. As a family."
"We aren't a family," I said, standing up. "We concluded our business eighteen months ago at St. Vincent's Hospital."
"Business?" Arthur stepped forward onto the bottom timber stair, waving an envelope. "Is that what you call cutting your flesh and blood off while you sit on millions? Do you know what’s happened to us since that broadcast? The Henderson family filed a formal complaint with the country club board. They claimed our presence created an 'unwelcome atmosphere of public notoriety.' We were forced out. We had to dump the Portland house forty percent below market value because paparazzi and neighborhood bloggers wouldn't stop taking pictures of the front lawn!"
"You chose your dinner over my life," I replied quietly. "You bought that house's stigma yourself."
"It was a mistake!" he barked, his calm facade slipping to reveal the raw, entitled anger beneath. "Troy is ruined, Amelia! He’s working night shifts at an entry-level logistics warehouse in Boise. He sleeps on a futon! Meanwhile, you took James’s architectural insurance settlement and built a tax-exempt playground for strangers. James was an architect, but who paid for your wedding? Who cosigned his first office lease ten years ago? We have an equitable claim to that estate!"
There it was. The venom was always wrapped around a dollar bill.
"James paid that cosign off within six months, with twenty percent interest," I said, holding up my phone. The screen was already dialed to the Clatsop County Sheriff’s dispatch. "You have sixty seconds to turn that rental around and drive back down Highway 101, or I press call. And if you go near Marcus or anyone in town, I’ll add criminal harassment to the injunction."
Arthur’s face turned mottled red. He jabbed a trembling finger toward the porch. "You think you're safe out here by the water? You think money buys peace? Troy has a lawyer now, Amelia. A real shark from Seattle. He’s filing to contest James's foreign death benefit on jurisdictional grounds. You're going to lose every dime you stole from this family!"
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"Take an Uber to court, then," I said, and stepped back inside, locking the heavy brass deadbolt into place.
Through the sidelight window, I watched him slam the car door so violently the frame shook. But as the rental kicked up gravel and sped away, my hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from the sudden realization that vultures never stop circling while they believe there is still meat on the bone.
