Sitting in the café, I checked my Apple Watch. The climax was approaching.
I took a sip of coffee. The bitterness faded, leaving a sweet aftertaste. In life, eventually, everyone pays the toll. And today was the day I came to collect.
At exactly two o’clock, the Los Angeles heat was pressing down on everything in sight. The two massive moving trucks rumbled into the elite gated community in Bel-Air, with Kyle’s bright red Charger tailing them closely. The manicured trees, high walls, and extravagant estates left the trio awestruck.
Kyle stuck his head out the window, eyes wide, muttering as if calculating the neighborhood’s net worth.
The trucks stopped in front of Estate 86. The wrought-iron gates stood under the sun like something out of a movie.
Brenda hopped out, clutching a ring of old keys, including a duplicate she had secretly made while David still lived with me.
She bossed the drivers around. “Back the trucks right up to the gates. I’ll open them now, and you can pull straight into the driveway so we do not have to carry things too far.”
With the confidence of a general conquering a fortress, she marched up to the pedestrian gate. She chose the largest key and tried to jam it into the lock.
The key would not go in. She twisted it. Pushed it. Shoved with so much force the metal bent. The door did not budge.
“What is wrong with this lock today?” Brenda muttered, sweat beading on her forehead.
Savannah stood nearby, fanning herself with a magazine. “Mom, hurry up. This heat is unbearable. Did you grab the wrong key?”
“What do you mean, wrong key? I guard this key with my life.”
Kyle jumped out of his car and shoved his mother aside. “Ma, step back.”
He grabbed the keys, ready to use force, but when he looked closely at the lock, he froze. Where the traditional deadbolt used to be, there was now a sleek black digital panel, modern, cold, and entirely keyless.
It was a state-of-the-art biometric smart lock with facial recognition and fingerprint scanning, installed that very morning after court.
“Mom, we have a problem,” Kyle yelled. “Vicki changed the locks.”
Brenda reacted as if she had been stung. She ran to the panel and started pounding on it with her fists. “How dare she change the locks in my son’s house? Open up. Open up immediately.”
The panel only released a sharp, high-pitched error beep. The gates stayed firmly shut, coldly rejecting them.
The heat and crushing disappointment made Brenda boil over. She threw the keys onto the ground, grabbed the iron bars with both hands, and began shaking the gate.
“Vicki, come out. Why are you hiding? Open this door. This house belongs to my David. You have no right to keep me out.”
Her screeching shattered the quiet of the wealthy neighborhood. Savannah joined in, banging her heel against the metal bars. “Vicki, do not be cruel. You’re divorced. Give the house back to my brother.”
The moving truck drivers watched the scene and shook their heads. One yelled, “Hey, lady, are we going in or what? The meter is running, and in this heat, it is not cheap.”
Hearing the word money, Brenda grew even more frantic. “Just wait. As soon as I get in, I’ll pay you. Now let me deal with this gold digger.”
The disturbance quickly drew attention. In a neighborhood where privacy and silence were treated like sacred rules, the Peterson family’s behavior was like setting off a siren in a library.