Chapter 5 - The House in PinecrestZ
The tires of Abigail’s Ford sedan crunched over the gravel driveway of her modest, single-story home in the Pinecrest neighborhood. The house was small, built in the late 1970s with faded yellow siding and a porch that needed painting, but it was the only piece of the world that had ever truly belonged to her. For thirty years, every brick and floorboard had been paid for with her sweat, working double shifts as a seamstress and private caregiver.
As she pulled up, she saw a battered silver pickup truck parked crookedly in the front yard. The front door of her house was standing wide open, swinging gently in the afternoon breeze.
Marcus, the private security guard provided by Lawson, reached for his holster from the passenger seat. "Mrs. Riley, let me go in first. He could be unpredictable."
"No, Marcus," Abigail said firmly, unclasping her seatbelt. "Wait by the car. If I am not out in fifteen minutes, or if you hear shouting, you come in. But this is between a mother and her son."
Abigail stepped out of the car, her heart steady, though a heavy sadness sat in the pit of her stomach. She walked up the creaky wooden steps of the porch and stepped through the open doorway into the living room.
The house was in absolute chaos.
Drawers had been pulled out and dumped onto the carpet. Cushions were ripped off the old floral sofa. Family photograph frames had been knocked off the mantelpiece, their glass shattered on the hardwood floor. Spencer was in the hallway, frantically tearing through the linen closet, throwing towels and old sheets behind him like a madman.
He was wearing sweatpants and a crumpled shirt, his face pale, sunken, and covered in a cold sweat. He looked like a ghost of the boy she had raised.
"Where is it?!" Spencer screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria as he kicked a stack of photo albums across the hallway. "Where did you hide it?!"
Abigail stood motionless near the entryway, her hands folded over her purse. "Looking for something, Spencer?"
Spencer spun around, gasping for air. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and frantic. When he saw his mother standing there, unbothered and calm, a terrifying mixture of rage and desperation crossed his feature.
"Mom!" he yelled, taking a unsteady step toward her, clutching his side where his surgical drain had been removed prematurely. "Where is the lottery ticket? I searched your bedroom, I searched the kitchen! Where did you put it?!"
"The ticket is in a safe deposit box at the downtown bank, Spencer," Abigail said quietly, her voice devoid of emotion. "Where it belongs."
"You lied to me!" Spencer screamed, tears of frustration pouring down his cheeks as he slammed his fist against the wall, leaving a dent in the drywall. "You lied! You told me you were stuck in traffic! You went to a lawyer! You went to Naomi! You betrayed me!"
"I betrayed you?" Abigail asked, stepping over a broken picture frame—a photograph of Spencer’s eighth birthday party, where he was blowing out candles while she beamed behind him. She looked down at the shattered glass, then looked up into his wild eyes. "You stood in that hospital room and planned how to drain every penny of a fortune I hadn't even collected yet. You forged my name on six hundred and eighty thousand dollars in toxic debt. You placed a keylogger on my phone to spy on my bank accounts. And you teamed up with Garrick Vance, a man who threatened to kill you if I didn't hand over three million dollars today."
Spencer flinched at the mention of Garrick's name, his face turning even paler. "Garrick... Garrick came to you?"
"I took care of Garrick," Abigail said flatly. "He signed a full release. He won't touch you, and he won't touch me. You're free from him."
Spencer’s eyes lit up with a sudden, sick hope. "You... you paid him? You used the money to pay him off?"
"I didn't give him a single cent," Abigail replied. "I used the truth to crush him. Just like I am going to use the truth to deal with you."
Spencer’s hope vanished, replaced instantly by an ugly, venomous sneer. He took three aggressive steps toward her, towering over her small frame. "You think you're so smart, don't you? You think you're some kind of mastermind now because you got lucky with six numbers on a piece of paper! That money belongs to this family! It belongs to me! I am your only son! Who else are you going to leave it to? Some charity?! You owe me that money, Mom! You spent my whole life making me feel like a failure, and now you have the chance to fix it!"
Abigail stared up at him, feeling no fear, only a deep, profound pity for the hollow creature standing before her.
"I made you feel like a failure?" Abigail whispered, her voice trembling slightly with the weight of thirty years of painful memories. "Spencer, I worked sixteen hours a day so you could have brand-new clothes for school. I sold my mother's heirloom jewelry so you could go to college—a college you dropped out of after two semesters because you were too lazy to go to class. I paid off your credit cards when you were twenty-two. I paid off your car loans when you were twenty-five. I gave you every dollar I ever made, and when I had no dollars left, I mortgaged this house to keep your failing business afloat."
She took a step closer to him, pointing a finger at his chest. "I didn't make you a failure, Spencer. I enabled you to become a parasite. My love didn't save you; it destroyed you because I taught you that no matter how horribly you behaved, your mother would always swallow her pride and pay your bills."
"Shut up!" Spencer roared, lunging forward and grabbing Abigail by the shoulders, shaking her violently. "Shut up! Give me the key to the safe deposit box! Give it to me now or I swear to God I will tear this house down brick by brick!"
Before Spencer could push her further, the front door burst open with a deafening crash.
Marcus charged into the room, his hand on his sidearm. "Get your hands off her now!"
Spencer gasped, startled by the massive security guard. He stumbled backward, releasing Abigail, his eyes darting frantically toward the open kitchen window behind him. In a state of pure, desperate panic, realizing he was trapped and outmaneuvered, Spencer turned and bolted through the kitchen, throwing open the back door and sprinting across the overgrown backyard toward his truck.
"I'll catch him!" Marcus shouted, moving to pursue.
"No, Marcus! Stop!" Abigail called out sharply.
Marcus stopped in his tracks, looking back at her in confusion. "Mrs. Riley, he just assaulted you! We need to stop him!"
"Let him go," Abigail said, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she smoothed down the lapels of her coat. She walked over to the front window and watched Spencer’s silver truck speed down the driveway, throwing gravel into the air before screeching onto the main road and vanishing into the distance.
She turned back to the ruined living room. The home she had cherished for three decades was wrecked, but for the first time in her life, Abigail felt entirely unburdened. The illusion was gone. The toxic bond was severed.
She picked up her phone from her purse and dialed Lawson Ray.
"Lawson," Abigail said, her voice steady and absolute. "Call the District Attorney. I want to press full criminal charges against Spencer Riley for grand larceny, identity theft, deed forgery, and physical assault. Issue an immediate warrant for his arrest."
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"Abigail... are you sure?" Lawson asked quietly on the line. "Once the warrant is issued, it becomes public record. The media will catch wind of a twenty-million-dollar lottery winner prosecuting her own son."
"Let them print it on the front page of every newspaper in the country," Abigail said, looking down at the broken photograph of her past. "The old Abigail died in Room 12 at St. Jude Hospital. Tell the police to find him."
