Chapter 4 - The Country Club Fallout
By Thursday afternoon, the news of the Myers Park eviction had spread through Charlotte’s high-society circles like wildfire through dry pine. In cities like this, old money talks quietly, but new embarrassment screams across every cocktail hour.
I sat in the corner booth of the Charlotte City Club on the thirty-first floor of the Bank of America building. Across from me sat Richard Henderson, the senior managing partner of Henderson & Cole, the premier commercial real estate firm in the Southeast. Richard had been Arthur’s fraternity brother at Chapel Hill fifty years ago; he was an old bull who didn't tolerate nonsense.
""I had lunch with your boy three days ago, Eleanor,"" Richard said, cutting into a rare filet. ""He was pitching his design for our new uptown mixed-use tower. Grandiose stuff. Glass atriums, Italian marble everywhere, completely ignoring the structural load-bearing costs. When I questioned his budget, he told me Ashford backing would bridge any shortfall.""
""There is no Ashford backing,"" I said plainly. ""Arthur’s money died with Arthur, and my money belongs to the foundation and the projects I choose to fund. Grant has no access to my accounts.""
Richard looked at me closely, noticing the concealer I had carefully applied over the remaining bruise on my cheekbone. His eyes hardened. He didn't ask what caused it, but he wasn't a fool; he had heard the rumors from the country club locker room that morning. Grant had spent Wednesday night drinking heavily at the bar, railing against his 'tyrannical, unhinged mother' until security quietly asked him to surrender his keys.
""He tried to borrow two hundred thousand from my junior partner yesterday morning,"" Richard said, shaking his head. ""Told him there was an administrative freeze on his estate during a tax audit. Paige called my wife, Evelyn, crying about how Eleanor Ashford had locked them out of their family home in a fit of senile jealousy.""
""What did Evelyn say?""
Richard smiled thinly. ""Evelyn told Paige that if Eleanor Ashford walked through the door of the Myers Park house with a hammer, it was probably because Eleanor had bought the nails, the lumber, and the land underneath it, and that a girl from an insurance family in Raleigh ought to learn how to speak to her elders.""
I took a slow sip of iced tea. ""The contract for your uptown tower, Richard. Don't pull it out of spite for me. Judge Grant strictly on his merit.""
""I am judging him on his merit, Eleanor,"" Richard said coldly. ""A man who cannot honor the bedrock that formed him will cut corners on the concrete he pours for his clients. He doesn't have the discipline for an eighty-million-dollar tower. I canceled his firm's presentation this morning. We went with an outfit out of Atlanta.""
My heart gave a dull, aching pang. A mother never entirely stops hurting when her child fails, even when that failure is entirely earned. I had wanted Grant to be great. Arthur and I had worked eighty-hour weeks in the mud so Grant could sit in air-conditioned studios with pristine blueprints. But we had shielded him so thoroughly from the dirt that he had never learned how to respect the earth.
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As I left the City Club, my phone buzzed with a notification from a local lifestyle blog: 'Myers Park Shock: Socialite Couple Ousted from Landmark Hermitage Estate Amid Family Feud.' The article featured a grainy photograph taken by a neighbor showing Paige standing on the curb surrounded by wardrobe boxes, shouting at a moving van driver.
Underneath the post, the comments were merciless. The very social circle Paige had spent five years desperately courting had turned on them instantly. In the world of the wealthy, nothing smells as foul as sudden poverty.
