Chapter 4 - The House on Elm Street
The financial reality hit us like a physical blow. When Arthur passed away in August, the only inheritance he left behind was the small brick ranch-style house on Elm Street where Ellis had grown up. The house was fully paid off, valued at nearly three hundred and eighty thousand dollars in the booming North Carolina housing market.
We had already met with a real estate agent. We had already factored the proceeds of that sale into our family's future. Ellis was an assistant manager at an electrical supply depot; I was a middle school English teacher on maternity leave. We had twenty-two thousand dollars in credit card and student loan debt, and our monthly mortgage on the new nursery house was stretching our budget to the absolute limit.
""He wants us to give away the entire house,"" Ellis said, his eyes wild with disbelief. ""Lacey, that's everything we were counting on. We planned to pay off our debts, fix the roof, and put fifty thousand into a 529 college account for our boy. And Dad wants me to hand it over to a total stranger?""
""He's not a stranger, Ellis,"" Florence said quietly, stepping between us. ""He's a man whose life your father destroyed. Arthur didn't have the courage to do this while he was alive because he was afraid he would go to jail in his seventies. He was afraid of what the neighbors would say. He dumped his conscience into your hands because he was too weak to carry it to the grave.""
""That's not fair!"" Ellis shouted, slamming his hand down on the island. The sudden noise made me flinch, and our unborn baby gave a sharp, sudden kick inside me. Ellis saw my expression and immediately softened, reaching out to steady me. ""Lacey, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But this is insane. We can't just surrender our child's security because of something that happened in 1994 before I was even in high school!""
""Ellis, look at me,"" I said, holding his gaze firmly. ""Look at the nursery. You packed away our baby's clothes and filled that closet with those shoes because you were already carrying this guilt before you even opened that envelope. You knew something was wrong. You felt the weight of it.""
""I thought they were just keepsakes,"" Ellis whispered, looking down at his boots. ""When I saw the shoeboxes in the false floorboard, I brought them here because I didn't want the estate sale liquidators touching them. I didn't know what they meant until I saw Dad's note this morning. Lacey, if we give away that money, how are we going to survive your unpaid leave? How are we going to afford daycare?""
""We don't make any decisions right now,"" I said calmly, trying to be the steady anchor we both desperately needed. ""Tomorrow morning, the bank opens at nine. We go to the safety deposit box. We look at the documents. And then... we find Marcus Vance.""
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Ellis looked terrified. ""And if the confession is real? If it completely clears him?""
""Then we have to do the right thing,"" I answered, placing his hand over my belly, right where our baby was moving. ""Because I will not raise our son in a house bought with a stolen life.""
