Chapter 3 - Panic in Burgundy Lace
The music inside the Hawthorne Hotel ballroom seemed to warp and fade in Diane’s ears.
She stood near the kitchen doors—the very doors where she had relegated Walter and Helen—clutching her diamond-encrusted smartphone with white knuckles.
Her sister, Evelyn, walked over with a glass of champagne. "Diane? Are you alright? The photographer is asking if we should take the big family portrait without Claire."
"Shut up, Evelyn," Diane snapped, shoving past her toward the lobby.
She dialed her private estate attorney, Richard Sterling, frantically tapping her foot against the marble floor.
"Richard! Answer the damn phone!" she muttered under her breath.
The call connected on the fourth ring. "Diane? It’s nearly ten o'clock. Isn't your birthday gala underway?"
"Walter Carter," Diane choked out, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "Did Harold have a secondary mortgage with Walter Carter?!"
Richard went silent for three long seconds. When he spoke, all professional joviality had vanished from his voice.
"How do you know about that, Diane?"
Diane’s heart plummeted straight into her stomach. "He just called me! He said a balloon payment is due tomorrow!"
"Diane... I warned you about this three years ago," Richard said in a somber, hushed tone. "Walter Carter didn't just hold a secondary note. He bought the entire primary lien from the bank during the financial restructuring fifteen years ago. He structured it as an interest-only forbearance until your sixty-fifth birthday."
"Why didn't Harold tell me?!" she shrieked, drawing stares from a hotel concierge nearby.
"Harold didn't want you to know he had gambled away the family capital, Diane," Richard explained with brutal honesty. "Walter Carter took out an equity line against his own retirement pension to cover the note so Harold wouldn't die knowing you'd be homeless. Walter has been paying the property taxes out of his own pocket every December."
Diane slumped against the polished mahogany pillar of the lobby, the burgundy lace of her designer gown suddenly feeling like a suffocating shroud.
Every memory of the past fifteen years rushed over her like a tidal wave of ice water.
She had laughed at Walter when he arrived in his ten-year-old pickup truck to help fix her leaking kitchen pipes.
May you like
She had sneered at Helen when she brought homemade casseroles in Tupperware containers to Thanksgiving dinners, calling it 'blue-collar comfort food.'
And tonight, she had placed Helen beside the kitchen trash doors with a water pitcher, treating the woman who had sheltered her life like an invisible servant.
