Chapter 17 - The Arrest
When Chloe and my mother discovered that my father had flipped on them, the suburban house erupted into a war zone. Neighbors called the police after hearing glass shattering and screaming emanating from the property at midnight. When the patrol cars arrived, they found Chloe throwing my father’s clothes out onto the lawn while my mother hysterically tried to attack one of the responding officers with a broom handle.
Both women were arrested on the spot—my mother for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, and Chloe for violating the terms of her pre-trial bail by engaging in domestic violence against her father.
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Because of the new charges and their demonstrated flight risk and volatility, the judge revoked their bail entirely. I watched the local morning news on my television while sipping my coffee, seeing footage of my thirty-three-year-old sister and my sixty-two-year-old mother being led out of a police cruiser in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits, their faces pixelated but unmistakable.
The family dynamic that had ruled my life for thirty years was dead. There was no one left to manufacture disasters, no one left to relabel them as accidents, and certainly no one left to pay the bailout.
