Chapter 5 - The Turning TideThe lawsuit was dropped within forty-eight hours of Sarah sending the preliminary evidence to Marcus’s lawyer.
He didn't just drop the suit; he disappeared. He stopped texting. He stopped calling Mom. He realized that if the truth about his gambling came out, the little social standing he had left in the community would evaporate.
My mother, for the first time in my life, was forced to face the reality of who her children actually were. She came over on a Thursday, unannounced, but this time she didn't march. She walked slowly, looking tired and suddenly very old.
"I didn't know," she whispered, sitting at my kitchen table while I poured her tea.
"You didn't want to know, Mom," I said. "You wanted to keep the picture of the 'happy family' intact. You didn't want to see that Marcus was a liability, and you certainly didn't want to see that I was the one holding it all together."
She looked at Ethan, who was working on his homework at the counter, completely unbothered by her presence.
"He’s a good boy," she said, her voice cracking.
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"He is," I agreed. "He’s a good boy because he knows that if he wants something, he has to work for it. He doesn't expect the world to hand him a barbecue or a custom bike. And he certainly doesn't expect his family to take advantage of his kindness."
She stayed for an hour, but there was no apology, just a profound, hanging realization. She left without asking me to fix anything else. She didn't ask for gas money. She didn't ask me to call Marcus. She just drove away.
