Chapter 6 - The Office of Broken Pride
Thirty minutes later, Thomas and Jenna burst through the glass double doors of Vance & Associates Legal Offices in downtown Columbus.
Thomas’s hair was plastered to his forehead with rain, his expensive wool coat drenched and steaming in the heated lobby.
Jenna marched behind him, slamming her designer umbrella into the brass stand with such force the metal clattered loudly against the marble floor.
"Where is she, Martha?!" Thomas yelled across the reception desk, ignoring the startled receptionist. "Where is my mother?!"
The frosted glass door to the private corner office opened smoothly.
Martha Vance stepped out, wearing a tailored charcoal suit, holding a steaming mug of tea and a blue legal folder.
"Lower your voice, Thomas," Martha said in a low, authoritative voice that had silenced corporate boardrooms for forty years. "You are not in a schoolyard. Step into my conference room before I have building security escort both of you into the street."
Thomas swallowed hard, his arrogant bravado crumbling under Martha's piercing, stern gaze.
They followed her into the wood-paneled conference room, sitting in plush leather armchairs facing a wide mahogany table.
"Where is she, Martha?" Thomas asked again, his voice dropping into a desperate, pathetic whimper. "She sold the house. People are moving in right now! She took Walter's tools, the furniture, everything!"
"Your mother completed the legal conveyance of 742 Elm Street as was her absolute right under the laws of the State of Ohio," Martha stated with clinical precision, sliding the blue folder onto the table between them.
"She has two million dollars!" Jenna shrieked, leaning across the table with wide, manic eyes. "We have property tax liens due in two hours! Our credit is about to be destroyed! Tell her to wire the six thousand dollars immediately!"
Martha slowly adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses, turning her gaze onto Jenna with unmasked, clinical disgust.
"Mrs. Henderson does not owe you six thousand dollars, Jenna," Martha said softly. "Nor does she owe you two hundred and fifty dollars. In fact, under the accounting records she provided to my office, you and Thomas have extracted precisely twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and sixty dollars from her retirement accounts over the last fourteen months."
May you like
"That was family support!" Thomas pleaded, tears finally welling in his bloodshot eyes. "Parents help their children! Dad would have never let us drown!"
"Your father spent thirty-four years working in freezing water trenches so your mother would have financial dignity in her old age, Thomas," Martha said, her voice cutting like a razor. "Walter didn't sacrifice his health so you could buy four-thousand-dollar swimming pools and lease German luxury cars while your widowed mother ate canned soup alone on Elm Street."
