Chapter 7 - The ArrestThe cold metallic click of the handcuffs echoing through the grand foyer was the sweetest sound I had heard in six years.
Melissa thrashed violently against the deputy’s grip, her emerald green dress tearing slightly at the shoulder as she kicked her heels against the hardwood floor.
“Get your hands off me!” she screamed, her face flushed dark red, mascara running down her cheeks in messy black tracks. “Derek! Do something, you pathetic coward! Call our lawyer! Tell them they can’t do this to me!”
Derek didn't move. He stood frozen as the senior deputy pulled his arms behind his back, snapping the second pair of cuffs around his wrists. Derek didn't fight. He didn't scream. Tears streamed silently down his face as he looked at our mother, who was sitting on the living room sofa, wrapped in a warm blanket I had placed around her shoulders.
“Mom...” Derek choked out, his voice cracking with pathetic desperation. “Mom, please... tell them not to take me. I’m your son. I made a mistake... please, Mom.”
My mother looked up from the sofa. For years, she had covered for Derek. She had given him her food, her money, her pride, and her safety, holding onto the faint hope that her eldest son would eventually love her back.
She looked at his handcuffs. She looked at his tearful face.
Then she looked at the bruises on her own arms.
“You watched her hit me, Derek,” Mom said softly, her voice remarkably steady despite her trembling body. “You watched her hit me three times last month. And every time, you just walked away.”
Derek flinched as if he had been shot. He lowered his head, unable to meet her gaze any longer.
“Take them out,” Deputy Miller ordered, guiding Derek toward the open front door.
As the deputies led Derek and Melissa down the stone porch steps, Evelyn—Melissa’s mother—frantically grabbed her designer handbag and tried to hurry past the officers toward the driveway.
“Wait!” Arthur Pendelton called out, stepping into the doorway and blocking Evelyn’s path.
Evelyn stopped, clutching her bag to her chest like a shield. “What?! I didn't hit anyone! I didn't take any money! You can’t arrest me!”
“We aren't arresting you, Mrs. Miller,” Arthur said with a cold, professional smile. “However, as the legal representative of the property owner, I am serving you with an immediate notice of criminal trespass. You have fifteen minutes to pack your personal clothing from the master suite and vacate these premises.”
“Fifteen minutes?!” Evelyn gasped. “It will take me hours to pack my things! I have four trunks of clothes! Where am I supposed to go at nine o’clock at night?!”
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I walked up beside Arthur, looking down at the woman who had spent three months occupying my mother’s bedroom while my mother slept on a cot.
“There’s a 24-hour motel down by the highway,” I said softly. “I suggest you start walking. Because in fifteen minutes, the deputies will be back to tow your car off my driveway.”
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