Chapter 14 - The Long Road Home
For the next forty-eight hours, I heard nothing directly from Mark. Thanks to Uncle Henry's rapid-fire legal maneuvering, my assets were secured in an ironclad trust my parents had smartly set up before I got married, which Mark had never fully understood. All my personal accounts were moved to a new bank, leaving only the joint checking account active—with a balance of negative forty-two dollars.
I later found out through the grapevine—specifically, through a mutual friend who followed Chloe on Instagram—exactly how their luxurious Aspen retreat had ended.
Without a working credit card, the hotel manager had physically escorted Mark, Brenda, Chloe, and Mia off the premises. They were forced to leave their designer luggage behind as collateral for the unpaid bill.
Mia, realizing that Mark was not the limitless ATM he had pretended to be, had thrown a massive fit in the hotel driveway. According to the friend, she had ordered her own Uber to the airport and flown home on her own dime, leaving Mark to deal with his screaming mother and furious sister.
They had no plane tickets, no rental car, and no money for a hotel. Mark had been forced to call one of his junior associates at the accounting firm to wire him enough money for three Greyhound bus tickets.
Instead of flying first-class back to our comfortable suburban home, my husband, my snobby mother-in-law, and my pampered sister-in-law spent three grueling days sleeping upright on a bus smelling of stale chips and chemical toilets, rolling through the American heartland.
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Every time I thought about Brenda trying to sleep on a vinyl bus seat next to the bathroom, I couldn't help but smile as I picked the sweet corn. The sun felt a little warmer, the breeze a little sweeter.
But I knew the peace wouldn't last. The bus was scheduled to arrive in our town by Friday evening. The storm was coming, and I was ready to meet it head-on.
