The day before the court hearing, the HOA chairman, Vince Gray, summoned me to the police station instead.
The station was packed with people.
There was a huge table in the center of the room. Albert and Thelma were seated on one end, looking completely aggrieved, with seven or eight of their relatives standing behind them. Meanwhile, I was seated alone on the other end of the table, like I was guilty of some heinous crime.
Vince sat at the head of the table and cleared his throat. Then, he loudly accused me, saying, "Ms. Everett, you know that the Blanchard family had been treating you very well in the past! How dare you seize their family property and steal it from them?"
I chuckled.
"What do you mean by saying that I seized it and stole it from them? I legally inherited the house. How could you say that I stole it?"
Vince was speechless.
"Deborah Everett, how could you chase the elderly couple out of their own house right after the passing of their son? Are you such a heartless woman after all? Do you not have a conscience?
"How could such a shameless and venomous woman like you even exist in this world?"
Albert's elder sister and Matt's aunt, Eloise Blanchard, was the first to open fire against me. She actually purposely dressed up for the occasion, wearing a tea-length dress in a neutral color with a white flower corsage pinned to her chest.
I stared at her empty wrist and recalled how she had stolen the gold bracelet Mom gave me as part of my wedding gift when I was on my deathbed due to stomach cancer. She even shamelessly said, "You're dying anyway. Might as well not waste it on you."
I replied, "Since you're such a kindhearted person, Aunt Eloise, why don't we discuss how you misappropriated Mom's and Dad's pension money by using it to invest in stocks? You made a loss of 200,000 dollars and then lied to them, saying that you had fallen victim to a telephone scam. Isn't that right?"
Eloise's face immediately turned as red as a tomato. Thelma immediately turned around to glare fiercely at her.
However, just a split second later, she put on a tearful and pitiful expression, hunched over in the chair, and burst into tears.
"My poor, poor son! How could you have left us at such a young age? How could you abandon us like this? How are we supposed to survive?
"Debbie, I have always treated you as my own daughter for so many years! How could you be so heartless toward us?
"Where did we go wrong? What did we do to you?"
Thelma's cries echoed loudly in the police station.
Even the police officer handling the case was somewhat touched by her words. His eyes filled with reproach as he looked at me. However, I remained as cold as ice.
Was that all Thelma had? I had even more surprises prepared for them!
I smiled lightly and slid over Matt's ID and social security card to the officer under Albert's and Thelma's noses. I said that I wanted to cancel his ID.
When Albert and Thelma realized what was happening, their faces turned deathly pale at once. Thelma immediately lunged at me as if I'd just stepped on her tail, but I neatly avoided her as I was prepared for it.
"You can't! You can't cancel my son's ID!"
Thelma's scream was loud and shrill, startling even the officer at the table.
I chuckled coldly.
"But he's dead. Why shouldn't I cancel his ID?"
"That's because if you did, Matt would—"
I knew that she wanted to say, "He would never be allowed to come back." It was just that she didn't dare to say it out loud.
Still, I insisted on cancelling Matt's ID and personal information.
Eloise immediately screamed at me and tried to grab the officer's laptop, while Matt's third granduncle, Hubert Blanchard, swung his cane directly at my head.
"That's enough!"
Even the officer couldn't stand it any longer.
"Ms. Everett is Mr. Matt Blanchard's legal spouse, and she has the right to cancel his ID and obtain a death certificate for him! If you keep up with this nonsense, I'm going to have to arrest the lot of you!"
The relatives didn't dare to cause any further trouble after being sternly warned by the officer. They could only watch helplessly as Matt's ID and information were canceled, making him appear dead in the system.
I looked at their ashen faces and felt a surge of pleasure well up inside my chest. Finally, I was avenging myself!
Matt wanted to play dead, didn't he? Well, of course, I had to make his wish come true and make sure he was truly as dead as a doorknob!
