My elder sister ripped my work shirt open on the crowded deck of the Oakhaven Yacht Club right in front of six visiting Navy officers.
With Marcus’s thumb drive clutched in my pocket, I felt a flicker of hope. The evidence was building, piece by damning piece. But Victoria wasn’t waiting for me to assemble my case. She was escalating.
A notice arrived at my door the very next morning, slipped under the crack. It was an emergency motion, filed in county court. Victoria was requesting an immediate order to demolish my wooden workshop within forty-eight hours, citing “imminent public danger.”
Her lawyers had somehow convinced a judge that my padlocked, unpowered shop was a greater threat to the community than her sinking luxury pier. It was a bald-faced lie, a desperate move to erase the evidence of my mother’s legacy, and by extension, my place in Oakhaven.
I spent the morning trying to contact a lawyer, anyone who could file an opposition pleading in time. The clock was ticking, a relentless countdown to the destruction of my home and business.
My phone rang just after noon. It was the hospital.
“Mr. Dempsey,” the nurse said, her voice clipped and urgent. “Your father, Arthur Dempsey. He’s been brought in by ambulance. Severe stroke. They’re rushing him to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Arthur. My father.
“Is he… is he conscious?” I asked, my voice cracking.
“He was, briefly,” she said. “But he’s unresponsive now. They’re stabilizing him for transfer.”
I dropped the phone, my hand trembling. Demolishing my workshop. Arthur’s stroke. The timing was too cruel, too devastating. Providence was an hour’s drive, an eternity.
I rushed out, abandoning the fight against the demolition order for the moment. My father needed me. As I drove, a chilling thought settled in my mind. Arthur’s stroke left the family homestead, the ancestral Dempsey home, completely unguarded.
Victoria had a clear path now. Not just to my workshop, but to everything.
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