The Debt Collector I Saved From A Crash Turned Out To Be The Woman Destroying My Life
Part 2
The silence that followed her confession was absolute.
I stopped breathing, the reality of her words sinking in like a rusted blade.
She was right.
The grace period ended at midnight.
It was morning now.
Every chair, every moth-eaten tapestry, the crumbling stone walls, the leaking roof, the very bed I was sitting on.
It all belonged to Megan Carter.
I was a trespasser in my own home.
I looked at the woman standing before me.
She didn’t look victorious.
She looked cold, tired, and deeply uncomfortable.
She shifted her weight, pulling the cuffs of my shirt down over her knuckles.
For a split second, I saw a flicker of something deeply human in her eyes.
A flash of guilt, or perhaps just the crushing weight of her own survival.
I walked blindly toward the heavy oak wardrobe in the corner.
I ripped the doors open, the hinges shrieking in protest.
I grabbed the thickest, ugliest wool blanket I owned, a scratchy military-issue monstrosity, and threw it over my shoulder.
I tossed it onto the armchair behind Megan.
I told her to keep the damn shirt.
I grabbed a rumpled linen shirt of my own from a shelf and pulled it over my head.
The fabric scraped against my bruised shoulder, making my vision swim with fresh pain.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from groaning.
I told her I would have Brian find her a proper dress.
She didn’t move toward the blanket.
She told me I didn’t have to play the martyr, that it didn’t change the ledger.
I turned back to face her, buttoning my own shirt with jerky, uncoordinated movements.
I told her I was trying to retain a single shred of my dignity.
A heavy, dragging footstep sounded in the corridor, followed by the rattle of a tin tray.
My bedroom door hadn’t fully latched, and it swung open to reveal Brian.
The old butler looked like a walking corpse.
He carried a chipped silver tray holding a blackened teapot and a single, tragic-looking heel of bread.
He surveyed the room, looking at me, barefoot and disheveled, and then at Megan in my oversized cambric shirt.
He set the tray down with a metallic clatter.
He announced that the roof in the kitchen gave way in the night.
He also mentioned he sent Tyler down to the carriage wreck.
Tyler found the lady’s trunk, or rather, pieces of it, smashed against the limestone wall.
There was a pile of wet leather and mud in the foyer.
Megan lunged for the door, panic finally breaking her iron facade.
I caught her by the elbow, throwing the scratchy wool blanket over her head.
I followed her down the grand staircase, my bare feet aching against the freezing marble.
In the foyer, we found the pathetic pile of debris.
Megan dropped to her knees, pulling at the sodden bundles of paper.
Her meticulous, calculated ledgers, the physical proof of her empire, were bleeding into illegible watery blue smears.
She looked entirely hollowed out.
She whispered that it was all gone.
Without those documents, she couldn’t prove she held the deed.
She was as trapped here as I was.
Are we destined to rot in this decaying house together, or is there a way out of this mutual ruin?
