Chapter 13 - The Suburb House Auction
The morning of December 15th arrived with six inches of fresh, powdery snow blanketing the manicured lawns of Naperville.
On the front lawn of 1142 Maplewood Drive, an industrial-sized wooden real estate sign had been driven deep into the frozen earth.
The crimson banner across the top read:
NOTICE OF PRIVATE MORTGAGE FORECLOSURE SALE
CONDUCTED BY STERLING, CROSS & VANCE
ON BEHALF OF NOTEHOLDER: JC RESIDENTIAL HOLDINGS LLC
A silver sedan from the DuPage County Sheriff’s Civil Process Unit was parked at the curb, its amber caution lights flashing lazily against the white drifts.
Beside it sat two commercial moving vans from Bekins Relocation Services, their diesel engines idling smoothly in the sub-zero air.
I sat in the warm leather passenger seat of Marcus’s SUV, parked fifty feet down the street, drinking a cardboard cup of black coffee.
Through the clear windshield, I watched the front door of my childhood home swing open.
Tyler emerged first, carrying two large plastic storage tubs filled with clothing.
He looked unrecognizable from the cocky, handsome boy who used to laugh off speeding tickets and interrupt Thanksgiving dinner with jokes about my work ethic.
His face was gaunt, his eyes sunken and surrounded by dark purple circles.
He wore an old winter jacket with a tear along the left sleeve that had been clumsily repaired with silver duct tape.
Behind him came Arthur Cole.
My father looked like a man who had shriveled twenty years in the span of sixty days.
His heavy shoulders were slumped, his gait slow and unsteady as he carried a cardboard box containing his high school football trophies and an old fishing tackle box.
He wore no hat against the freezing wind, his gray hair blowing wildly across his forehead.
Mom walked out last, clutching an antique porcelain lamp that had belonged to her grandmother.
She stopped at the foot of the brick steps, looking back at the two-story colonial where she had ruled her domestic kingdom for nearly three decades.
This was the living room where she had lectured me about giving Tyler eighteen hundred dollars.
This was the dining table where my corporate promotions were dismissed as 'good fortune,' while Tyler’s latest job loss was treated as a national tragedy requiring my immediate financial intervention.
Now, the house belonged to an LLC whose sole managing member was the boy she had told to pack his bags and sleep in an extended-stay hotel.
Marcus tapped the steering wheel with his gloved fingers, his eyes following Tyler as he loaded the plastic tubs into the back of an old, rented U-Haul trailer attached to Uncle Pete’s beat-up pickup truck.
"Where are they heading?" Marcus asked quietly.
"Uncle Pete’s property in Arlington Heights," I answered, watching the white exhaust billow from Pete’s truck.
"Pete has a converted two-car garage behind his split-level."
"Concrete floor, electric space heater, and a shared bathroom through the utility room."
"Arthur, Martha, and Tyler will all be sharing twelve hundred square feet for the winter."
Marcus let out a low, contemplative whistle.
"From a four-bedroom colonial in Naperville to a detached garage in Arlington Heights."
"That is a long fall."
"It is the landing they built for themselves with thirty years of unpaid debts," I replied.
The front door of Uncle Pete’s truck opened, and Uncle Pete stepped down into the snow.
He wore a stained hunting vest over a flannel shirt, his red face contorted with rage as he surveyed the moving crew loading Arthur’s heavy furniture onto the Bekins van.
Pete looked down the street and caught sight of Marcus’s black SUV idling by the curb.
His eyes locked onto me through the tinted passenger window.
Pete stomped through the snowbanks, his boots kicking up white powder, until he was standing five feet from my door.
He slammed his fist against the tempered glass of the passenger window.
"Roll it down, you coward!" Pete bellowed, his breath freezing into clouds of white steam.
"Roll the damn window down!"
I pressed the electronic console button.
The heavy glass slid down four inches, letting in the biting December wind.
"Yes, Pete?" I said, my voice completely level.
"You think you’re a big man, don't you?" Pete spat, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the door frame.
"Throwing your own mother into the snow ten days before Christmas!"
"Seizing your father’s house over an inflated technicality!"
"God is watching you, Jesse!"
"You will pay for this in the next life if not in this one!"
"Pete," I said, gesturing toward the U-Haul trailer.
"Did you read the certified audit documents Richard Sterling delivered to your residence yesterday?"
Pete’s jaw clenched, his eyes darting away for a split second.
"That's corporate propaganda—"
"The second mortgage on this home was taken out three years ago to pay off Tyler’s commercial loan default with Great Lakes Equipment," I stated factually.
"Arthur didn't lose this home to me."
"He lost it to his own inability to tell Tyler 'no.'"
"I merely bought the paper from the bank before the auction hit the municipal courthouse steps."
"If I hadn't bought the note, an institutional investment fund from Dallas would have evicted them forty-eight hours ago with zero moving assistance and their furniture dumped on the curb."
"Instead, JC Residential Holdings provided them with five thousand dollars in professional relocation credit and paid their first six months of storage facility fees in Elmhurst."
"Don't act like you did them a favor!" Pete screamed, his spit freezing on the glass.
"I didn't do it as a favor, Pete."
"I did it to keep the title transfer clean, pristine, and unappealable."
"Now, step away from this vehicle before I have the DuPage County deputy standing on that sidewalk issue a formal criminal citation for vehicular harassment."
Pete looked over his shoulder.
The deputy was already walking down the driveway, his hand resting casually on the leather holster at his hip.
Pete took two steps back, his chest heaving with impotent rage.
"You're dead to us, Jesse," Pete hissed, pointing a trembling finger at my face.
"None of us will ever speak your name again."
"You have no family."
"Pete," I said softly as the window began to slide upward.
"A family that only values you when you are bleeding is not a family."
"It's a slaughterhouse."
"And I stopped being livestock the night you kicked my door."
The glass sealed shut with a soft, airtight thump.
Marcus shifted the SUV into drive.
We pulled away from the curb, leaving the suburban house, the moving vans, and the shouting man behind us in the falling snow.
As we reached the intersection of Maplewood and 75th Street, Marcus glanced at the rearview mirror.
"What are we doing with the Naperville house, Jesse?"
"Renovate the kitchen and master bath," I instructed, opening my tablet to check the morning leasing reports.
"List it with our high-end suburban broker on March 1st."
"Projected net proceeds from the sale: two hundred and eighty thousand dollars."
"Every single dollar will be rolled into the renovation budget for 742 North Belden."
"We’re putting a rooftop deck and private resident lounge on the fifth floor."
Marcus smiled, turning onto the interstate ramp toward the city skyline.
"The tenants are going to love that."
"They will," I said, looking out at the endless expanse of gray concrete highway rolling toward the Loop.
May you like
"Because in my buildings, Marcus, people who pay their way are treated with respect."
"And people who think they can take what isn't theirs find out very quickly that concrete doesn't care about their feelings."
