CHAPTER 5
Within fifteen minutes, the luxury SUVs and pickup trucks were frantically speeding down the quiet coastal street, leaving behind a silent, ruined driveway.
Only Robert and Megan remained standing on the porch, surrounded by three large rolling suitcases they had secretly unpacked in my master bedroom upstairs.
"You unpacked your clothes in my room?" I asked, standing on the threshold while Arthur Vance and the deputies stood right behind me.
"We... we were going to ask you to move into the carriage house over the garage," Robert confessed, looking down at his shoes like a guilty child caught stealing candy. "Megan said... Megan said it would be easier for your knees if you didn't have to climb the main stairs anymore."
I let out a soft, bitter laugh, shaking my head as the sheer entitlement of their master plan settled into the humid sea air.
"You wanted to put me in the garage of the home I built with my own hands?" I asked, my voice dropping into a low, dangerous tone that made Robert flinch.
"Eleanor, please!" Megan begged, taking a step toward the doorway with a desperate, frantic expression. "We put a fifty-thousand-dollar earnest deposit on a new yacht based on Robert's expected early distribution from your estate trust!"
"Then you had better call the boat dealer and ask for a refund," Arthur Vance interjected smoothly, closing his briefcase with a loud, final click. "Because Mrs. Brooks's estate plan now directs one hundred percent of her liquid assets and real estate holdings to the Coastal Women's Shelter of South Carolina upon her passing."
Megan let out a choked, hysterical sob, staggering backward until she hit the porch railing she had planned to replace with glass panels.
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"You destroyed us!" Megan screamed, her knuckles white as she gripped the wooden beam. "You completely destroyed our future!"
"No, Megan," I said, stepping back into my home and preparing to close the heavy oak door. "You destroyed your own future the moment you assumed a hardworking woman was too old to defend her own life."
