Chapter 11 - The Visitor In The Rain
A sudden late-September rainstorm swept across Southern California on Thursday evening.
The rain beat against the skylights of my kitchen with a steady, rhythmic fury.
Gertrude had finished packing her small leather suitcase, preparing for her flight back to Phoenix the following morning.
She had spent five days helping me organize my files, shred old financial ties, and change the security passcodes on every account tied to the Miller name.
We were sitting by the fireplace, drinking tea in comfortable silence, when the intercom buzzer near the front gate chimed.
I pulled up the security camera monitor on my tablet.
Standing outside the wrought-iron gate in the pouring rain was Uncle Raymond’s older brother, Thomas—Lucas’s godfather.
Beside him stood a pathetic, soaked figure holding a wet grocery sack.
It was Lucas.
He had posted bail using Thomas’s retirement savings as collateral.
His hair was matted to his forehead, his designer coat was gone, and he stood shivering in a cheap grey hoodie that smelled of precinct holding cells.
"Do not let him through the gate, Clarissa," Gertrude warned quietly, not looking up from her knitting needles.
"I won't," I said.
I pressed the intercom button on the wall.
"Thomas," I said through the speaker. "You know he cannot be here."
"Clarissa, please," Thomas’s tired, cracking voice came through the speaker above the sound of falling rain.
"He has nowhere to go."
"His cards don't work."
"The hotels won't take him without a valid credit deposit."
"He just needs to collect his winter coat and the family photo albums from the attic."
Lucas shoved his face toward the camera lens, his eyes wide, bloodshot, and wild with exhaustion.
"Clarissa! Open the gate!" he begged, his voice breaking into a ragged sob.
"I haven't eaten since yesterday morning!"
"Chloe gave the police all my emails!"
"They are going to charge me with federal wire fraud!"
"You have to call Marcus and tell him to drop the civil complaint!"
"You're my wife! You swore an oath before God and your family to stand by me through better and worse!"
I walked over to the French doors and looked through the glass across the wet lawn toward the metal gates.
"You broke that oath the second you brought another woman into this foyer, Lucas," I said through the microphone.
"You broke it when you forged my name on an equity loan."
"You broke it when you spent eighty-six thousand dollars parading an analyst through luxury resorts while I stayed home managing your father's unpaid burial bills."
"I was sick, Clarissa!" Lucas wept, dropping to his knees on the wet asphalt outside the bars.
"I felt small! My father spent my whole life making me feel like a loser!"
"I needed to prove to everyone that I was a winner!"
"You didn't prove you were a winner, Lucas," Gertrude’s voice boomed through the speaker as she took the microphone from my hand.
"You proved you were a thief who lacked the spine to carry his own ambitions."
Lucas looked up, his jaw slack in horror as he heard his own mother's voice echoing through the rain.
"Mom... please... I am your only son..."
"You are my son," Gertrude replied, her voice steady and resolute.
"And because I love you enough to want your soul saved, I will not give you an umbrella while God is teaching you the weight of your sins."
"Take him away, Thomas," Gertrude commanded.
"Take him to your basement in Tempe."
"Let him eat cold beans and sleep on a cot until his trial date."
"Because if this gate opens tonight, it will only be for the sheriff to take him back to jail."
Thomas placed a heavy hand on Lucas’s soaked shoulder and pulled him backward off the wet pavement.
Lucas screamed my name one last time into the darkness, a high, desperate wail that was drowned out by the thunder rolling over the hills.
I watched through the glass as Thomas’s old station wagon turned around in the cul-de-sac and disappeared into the rain.
Gertrude hung up the microphone, turned off the hallway light, and returned to her chair by the fire.
May you like
"It is finished, Clarissa," she said softly.
"Now, we build your life back."
