Chapter 6 - Handcuffs and Reality
The next twenty minutes were a chaotic blur of flashing police lights, shouting relatives, and the slamming of patrol car doors.
Teresa wailed at the top of her lungs, screaming obscenities at the officers, at the neighbors who had gathered on the sidewalk to watch, and most viciously of all, at me. As Officer Miller escorted her out the front door in heavy steel handcuffs, she twisted her neck around, her eyes blazing with pure venom.
“You’ll regret this, Connor!” she shrieked, spitting onto the grass as they pushed her into the back of the squad car. “You’re choosing a nobody over your own flesh and blood! When that woman bleeds you dry, don't you dare come crying back to me! You’re dead to me! You hear me? Dead!”
Mason was led out through the side gate in a separate cruiser, head bowed down, refusing to look at anyone.
Within half an hour, the uninvited relatives had scurried away like rats from a sinking ship, loading themselves into luxury cars and speeding down the suburban street, eager to distance themselves from the legal disaster unfolding at our address.
The living room, once echoing with false laughter and boastful pride, was now deathly quiet.
The mariachi music had stopped. The expensive shrimp platters were left half-eaten on the tables. Empty liquor bottles stood like lonely sentinels amid the wreckage of a party designed to celebrate a baby, but which had actually been engineered to orchestrate our financial execution.
I locked the front door, drew the heavy velvet curtains, and walked back out to the driveway.
Amy was sitting quietly in the passenger seat of my truck. She had wrapped herself in my work jacket, and Frederick was sleeping fitfully against her chest, his breathing slightly less raspy now that the cool air-conditioning had brought his fever down a fraction.
I opened the door, stepping up onto the running board.
“They’re gone, Amy,” I said softly, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair from her forehead. “Teresa and Mason have been arrested for fraud and forgery. The police took all their files as evidence. We are completely safe.”
Amy looked up at me, her red-rimmed eyes welling with fresh tears, though this time, they weren't tears of fear. They were tears of profound, overwhelming relief.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “She... she was your mother, Connor.”
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“She stopped being a mother a long time ago, Amy,” I replied, my voice firm as I leaned in and kissed her temple. “She was a parasite who mistook my love for weakness. But that ends today.”
I drove them straight to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in downtown Nashville.
