Chapter 14 - The Financial Collapse
With the forty-eight-hour eviction deadline expired, the sheriff's deputies arrived at the townhouse on a rainy Tuesday morning to oversee the property lockout. Clara sat on the curb surrounded by twelve trash bags of clothes, a few suitcases, and whatever furniture she had managed to sell to a sketchy liquidation crew the night before for pennies on the dollar. Her luxury SUV had been towed away by the leasing agency three days prior due to payment default.
With nowhere else to turn, she dragged her belongings and her two silent, traumatized daughters to a cramped, two-bedroom apartment in a run-down complex on the industrial east side of the city—the only place willing to accept her without a credit check, provided she paid three months' rent upfront with the last of her pawned jewelry cash.
For the first time in over a decade, Clara Vance had to set an alarm for a real job. Through a distant acquaintance who pitied her situation, she managed to secure an entry-level position as an assistant shift manager at a high-volume, twenty-four-hour commercial laundry facility.
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Her days of leisure, spa appointments, and country club lunches were dead and buried. Now, her reality consisted of standing on concrete floors for ten hours a day amidst the deafening roar of industrial washing machines, breathing in the heavy, humid scent of bleach and cheap detergent, while being barked at by a twenty-five-year-old regional supervisor who didn't care about her former social standing.
Every time her feet throbbed in her cheap orthopedic shoes, and every time she looked at her chapped, detergent-burned hands, the universe delivered a silent, agonizing reminder of the price of her cruelty. She had wanted Aria to learn humility; instead, karma had delivered an entire ocean of it right to Clara’s doorstep.
