Erica Sinclair - Family Ties (M/F)

[Jenny_S]

When called upon to take care of her aging aunt, Erica Sinclair does not only have to deal with her own mistakes, but also with shady characters taking advantage of other people’s vulnerabilities. She learns that some battles are not won in the courtroom, but in the heart.

[Jenny_S]

Late morning light slants through floor-to-ceiling windows, casting sharp geometric shadows across the office suite on the 25th floor of Sinclair & Associates in that sleek steel-and-glass tower on Park Avenue.

The hum of Manhattan pulses outside - distant sirens, the muted thunder of traffic - but inside Erica Sinclair’s office, it's hushed.
Contained.
Clinical.

She flips the page of a deposition transcript, the thick paper crisp beneath her precise fingers.
Her coffee, forgotten, cools beside her, a miniature obsidian pool.
Erica exhales slowly, the sound almost imperceptible in the hushed office.
One more discrepancy, noted in red.
Another inconsistency to unravel, a knot in the meticulously woven fabric of the case she builds.

The phone on her desk buzzes, it's the sharp, jarring sound of an internal call – the reception desk's signal.
She taps the speaker key without looking up.
"Yes, Holly."

Holly Beck's voice, bright and cheerful, crackles through the speaker. "You have a call, Ms. Sinclair. A Dr. Keith Parker. He says it's regarding a family member."

Erica bites her lower lip.
An odd feeling is making its presence known in her stomach.
A beat of silence.
"Put him through, please."

There's a soft click, then a warm male voice enters the space like a fog through a cracked door.
"Ms. Sinclair? Dr. Keith Parker. I'm calling from Greenleaf Hospital in Scarsdale. I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time."

She straightens in her chair, pushes against the edge of her desk. "That depends on what you're calling about, Doctor."

A pause.
A physician's pause.
The kind that precedes unpleasant truths.
"I'm contacting you in regard to Mrs. Elisa Teran. According to her records, you're listed as her next of kin here in the United States."

The name hits her like a blow to the stomach, a sharp, cold jab that makes her right shoulder, still prone to a “ping” from an old injury, tighten imperceptibly.
Elisa.
Her mother’s older sister.
The unwelcome shadow in her childhood home.

Erica’s voice doesn’t change.
It never does.
"That might be accurate," she says. "What can I do for you, Doctor?"

He clears his throat. "You may be aware that Mrs. Teran has been showing signs of advancing dementia for some time. Unfortunately, a few days ago, she left a pot unattended on the stove. There was a small kitchen fire. Thankfully, a neighbor noticed the smoke and intervened. No one was harmed, but... this could have ended badly."

Erica's fingers tighten around the phone receiver.
Her knuckles whiten. She had no idea about this.
"I see."

"She's stable. Physically unharmed," Dr. Parker continues. "But it's obvious she can no longer live alone. Right now, she's in a temporary care room here at Greenleaf, but that's not a long-term solution. We'd like to discuss options - placement in a memory care facility, or... if family is able to provide support."

That final suggestion hangs in the air, unspoken implications pulsing beneath the surface like a slow, toxic current.
Erica’s jaw tightens, a muscle jumping beneath her skin. She leans back slowly in her chair, a deliberate retreat, her voice steady as granite. 'I’ll be in touch, Doctor.'"

She disconnects without another word. Her hand lingers over the phone for a second longer than necessary.

Why her?
Why now?

“Why should I care?” she asks herself.

Aunt Elisa.

The woman who moved into her home 16 years after her mother's death like a whisper with sharp elbows.
The one she'd avoided more than she'd ever confronted.
Erica hasn't seen her in - God, how long?
Four years?
Five?

She turns toward the windows, staring out over the skyline. The city sprawls beneath her like a living thing.
Untouched.
Unbothered.
But inside her, something has shifted.
A tremor beneath old foundations.

Her father would have told her to go.
Her mother - had she lived - would have begged her to.
She closes her eyes, then opens them, checks the time on the Rolex dive watch on her left wrist. The engraving on the caseback feels warm, as if whispering against her skin.

"Stand for something or fall for anything" it says.
Her father had the watch engraved with this creed, gifted her with it upon her graduation from Harvard Law School. It is a constant reminder to do the right thing, regardless the cost, no matter how hard.

Erica exhales slowly. Then she reaches for her coat and her bag.
The past just knocked on her door.
And it brought fire.

~~~

[LunaDog]

Interesting start. Although a family member, this Aunt Elisa obviously isn't somebody close to Erica's heart.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, I promise, you will learn more about their relationship soon.

[Jenny_S]

Claire Messner looks up from her desk just as Erica steps out of her office, coat draped over one arm, handbag slung over one shoulder, her expression carved from stone.
"Are you okay, Erica?" she asks gently, a note of concern threading through her voice.

Erica pauses, as if the question pulled her from somewhere far away. Her eyes meet Claire's - sharp, tired, unreadable.
"Yes, sure," she says automatically.

Claire knows her better than that. Everyone sees the polished surface; Claire sees the hairline fractures underneath, the subtle tension in Erica’s jaw, the slight stiffening of her shoulders.
The cracks that only deepen when no one looks.

Erica sighs. "Not really," she admits after a beat or two, and that’s enough to make Claire straighten in her chair.
"I just received a call from a hospital in Scarsdale," Erica continues, her voice lower now, stripped of its usual courtroom precision. "My aunt has been admitted. They need me to... figure things out. I’m… handling it."

Claire blinks.
Aunt?
In all the years she’s worked for Erica, not once had she heard mention of extended family.
That alone says something.
"If there’s anything I can do - anything at all…" Claire says softly.

"I will. Thank you.” Erica nods, then adds with a faint twist of her mouth, "You can reach me on my mobile."

Claire catches the shift in tone.
Her usual meaning: Don't call unless the office is on fire.
But today, it sounds more like: “Please... give me an excuse to come back early."

Then she's gone, her heels clicking down the hallway like a metronome.
She disappears into the elevator and doesn’t look back.


~~~


The black Volvo hums to life beneath her. The comfortable leather seat does little to untangle the knot in her gut. Erica maneuvers the SUV out of the underground parking garage, the cool darkness giving way to the harsh brightness of late-morning Manhattan as she turns onto Park Avenue and heads north.
Traffic is light - for once - but the silence inside the car grows heavier by the mile.

Her thoughts start as whispers. Then they rise.

Elisa Teran.

Erica grips the wheel tighter, her eyes focused on the road but her mind veering into old memories like a car sliding on black ice.
She can still see her - Elisa - on that hot June day, the summer after high school graduation. Just as Erica started packing for Harvard, dreaming in crimson and ivy, Elisa had appeared on their doorstep: penniless, worn suitcase in hand. Eyes rimmed red. Voice trembling.

A sob story.

It felt calculated.
Polished.
Practiced.
Weaponized.

Her father - God bless him - had taken one look at her and said, "We have a guest room. You can stay as long as you like."
And she had stayed.
Ever since.
Even after her father had died.

Erica’s hands flex against the leather of the steering wheel.
White lines flash past in rhythmic intervals.
Upper Manhattan gives way to the greener edges of the Bronx, and beyond that, the first hints of Westchester's affluent calm.

She remembers the slow suffocation.
How the house, once a place of laughter and structure, grew smaller with Elisa in it.
Not because she took up space - but because she disrupted something sacred.

From the moment Aunt Elisa walked through the door, Erica had felt that there was something wrong with the woman, suspected she was trying to take her mother's place and steal her father's heart.
None of that had happened, though, but her instinctive dislike, the brittle unease, that unspoken resentment for Elisa, had stayed throughout the years.

When her father passed, the house fell to her - legally.
But still, Elisa stayed.
And Erica let her stay.
No rent, just silence.
She even arranged for a monthly stipend as an echo of her father's kindness.

Not out of some suddenly found affection.
Out of obligation.
Out of... duty.
Because it was the right thing to do.
Because this was precisely what her father, with his unwavering moral conviction, would have wanted her to do.

She could have visited anytime she drove up to Bedford to see Lea, her Cleveland Bay mare. She has passed the Scarsdale exit often enough.
But she never took it.
Never turned the wheel toward the past.

Maybe she should have.

Maybe then the news from Dr. Parker wouldn’t have felt like someone tearing the bandage off a wound she didn’t realize was still bleeding.

The Volvo merges onto the Hutchinson Parkway.
The trees blur by.
Birds wheel against a sky that's too bright, too blue.
Her fingers drift briefly toward the car’s computer, tempted to turn on music.
A distraction.
Something.

But she doesn't.
She needs to feel the sharpness of her own thoughts, to untangle the snarled threads of the past.

Instead, she drives through the silence, the ghost of her childhood home waiting somewhere ahead - shabbier now, probably.
Hollow.
A house she hasn't set foot in for years only to avoid seeing Aunt Elisa.
But she knows what waits for her inside isn't just an aging aunt with a failing mind.

It's everything she's locked away behind courtroom walls and city views.
And this time, it's come calling.

Erica pulls into the parking structure of Greenleaf Hospital just after noon.
The concrete feels colder than it should for spring - gray walls, gray light, gray silence broken only by the echo of her heels as she crosses toward the elevator.
She hasn’t been here since her father's brief stay in the cardiac wing.
Different wing, different floor.
But the smell is the same – cleaners, plastic, overcooked vegetables from the kitchen three corridors away.
And something else, beneath it all, the metallic tang of sickness, the stale air of unspoken grief.
It is still enough to make her stomach clench, to want her to throw up.


~~~

[LunaDog]

Some unpleasant memories there. Erica obviously doesn't have a lot of time for this woman.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, to say that Erica isn't on best terms with the woman is putting it mildly. We'll find out more in tomorrow's episode.

[LunaDog]

And yet, Erica continued to allow her Aunt to live, rent free, in what was now HER own house.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, indeed, doing what she believes her parents would have wanted her to do.

[Jenny_S]

She passes the front desk, gives Elisa's name. The receptionist nods and makes a call. Within minutes, a tall man in scrubs and a navy fleece jacket approaches her with the calm gait of someone who has walked this floor a thousand times.
Late forties, maybe fifty, with thinning dark-blond hair and eyes that have seen too much but learned to hide it.

"Ms. Sinclair?" he says, offering his hand. "Keith Parker. Thank you for coming."

They shake hands. Firm. Professional.

"You said she’s stable?"

"She is. She’s alert. But her condition is... inconsistent. Some moments she’s lucid, conversational. Then she drifts. Forgets where she is. Sometimes who she’s speaking to. I won’t lie - it has progressed faster than we anticipated," Parker explains.

They begin walking down a wide corridor lined with windows overlooking the hospital gardens - budding trees, tulips forced into neat rows.
It’s peaceful.
Controlled.

Erica keeps pace beside him, her hands in the pockets of her tailored coat. "And the fire?"

"Contained. A neighbor saw the smoke and kicked the back door in. Your aunt didn't even notice the smoke until her neighbor rushed in. She insisted she was making tea.”

Erica’s jaw tightens. She says nothing.

"She had no burns," he continues. "Some mild smoke inhalation. She's lucky. If the neighbor hadn't…"

"I understand," Erica cuts in, more curtly than intended.

Dr. Parker nods. "We've run a full work-up. Nothing acute, but in her current mental state, she can’t go home. I'll be frank, Ms. Sinclair - she needs long-term care. Memory care. Supervision."

Erica glances sideways. "You're asking if I'm going to take her home with me."

Doctor Parker exhales.
This is a statement he has heard more than once.
“I'm saying that someone has to make a decision. And you're the only family she's listed in the U.S. The rest... well, Bolivia's a long way off. We wouldn’t even know how to search for any relatives there."

They stop at a door marked Room 314. A laminated sign beneath it reads Elisa Teran.
Dr. Parker pauses with his hand on the doorframe. "Just... be prepared. She might not recognize you. Or she might. You’ll know quickly."

Erica gives a tight nod. "Thank you, Doctor."
He steps back. "I'll be outside."

She hesitates.
She could still walk away, turn around, even if only to collect herself, but what’s the use of delaying the inevitable?
With a small sigh, Erica pushes the door open.

The room is small, sunlit, with a single window overlooking the lawn. The bed is raised, and in it, propped on two pillows, is a thin woman wrapped in a pale green blanket. Her once-rich black hair has faded to steel gray, tied back in a loose braid. Her skin is weathered, drawn around high cheekbones. Her eyes - once quick and sharp - are now vague.
Clouded, restless.

Erica freezes.

Elisa turns her head.

For a moment, nothing.
Then a flicker of distant recognition?
"El... Luisa?" the woman whispers, her voice thin as rice paper.

Erica’s spine straightens, a breath catching in her chest.
For a brief second, her heart seems to skip a beat.
She’s not Luisa.
But maybe this is what Elisa remembers best – a version of someone who used to belong.

"It's Erica,” she says softly. "Luisa's daughter."

Another pause.

Then Elisa smiles.
Faint.
Sad.
"You look just like her. Same mouth and chin. Same... distance."

Erica steps closer, slowly, like approaching some fragile thing that might crack under the weight of memory, unsure what to say.
Usually, she is never out of words or a witty reply.
But now, with this woman, with the weight of many years of unspoken history, her carefully constructed composure falters.

The silence stretches, heavy and awkward, and for once, Erica Sinclair has no defense.
She grips the bed rail as if she needs it to stay upright.
"Dr. Parker said you had an accident. That you're staying here for now."

Elisa's eyes trail her face. Then drift. "They say I can’t cook anymore. Imagine that."
She coughs drily, then gives a laugh, brittle as bone. "But I told them, didn’t I? The water was boiling. I just... forgot what for."

Erica pulls a chair close to the bed and sits. The silence stretches and her level of uneasiness increases by the minute.
The air in the room feels too still, too full.

Then Elisa says, without looking at her:
"They killed my husband, you know. And my boy. They made me watch."

Erica blinks.
The old woman’s gaze is far away now. Fixed on something behind the past, unseeing.
It is what her father called the “thousand-yard stare”, a phrase he used for men who were traumatized - who had seen too much - and Erica instantly recognizes it.


~~~


"They tied me to a chair, stuffed an old rag into my mouth. In Cochabamba. One of them used garden scissors to take this...”
She lifts her right hand, showing the missing pinkie. "He wanted my ring. My father's ring." A ghost of a smile. "It was gold, had our family crest on it."

Erica swallows, her throat dry, the words like ash on her tongue.
The casual brutality of the story makes her stomach churn, a sickening lurch she rarely experiences.

"They murdered my whole family. I came here because you and your father were the only family I had left. I told him I'd just stay a while. I didn't think I'd stay forever. Now, I'm simply going to die here.”

"You could have told us," Erica says, her voice low. "Told me."

“What would have you done? You were leaving. You were proud. You were hers.” Elisa’s words, quiet and devoid of malice, strike Erica with the force of a physical blow, dismantling years of carefully constructed resentment."

Erica shifts in her chair, suddenly feeling like a complete failure.
She hadn’t visited in years.
And now she was here, holding a checklist instead of flowers.

The silence between them stretches, brittle as glass.

Then Elisa’s eyes drift again.
Her face slackens slightly.
"They brought my lunch. Did you see it? Pudding again."
And just like that, she's gone - slipped back under.

Erica sits in that quiet room, staring at the woman she's hated for half her life.
Hated for no good reason.
Or maybe for all the reasons that matter when you're young and angry and trying not to grieve.

The woman who once wore her mother's perfume.
Who stood too close to her father when she thought no one noticed.
Who now floats in and out of a past soaked in blood and violence.

Her phone buzzes in her coat pocket, the familiar rhythm of a call she usually wouldn’t ignore, even if Claire is indeed calling to say the office is on fire.
But now, it feels distant.

Irrelevant.
She chooses to ignore it.

Then she reaches forward, gently, and takes the hand with the missing finger into hers.
"I'm going to find you a place." she whispers. "Somewhere safe."

Whether Elisa hears her or not - she doesn’t know.
But Erica means it.
Even if she has to walk back into the shadows to do it.


~~~

[LunaDog]

Seems this woman has a rather unpleasant past. There's obviously more to her than meets the eye.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, maybe Elisa will tell us more what brought her from Bolivia to Scarsdale in one of her lucid moments.

[Jenny_S]

The sun has shifted since Erica first arrived.
The angle of the light in Room 314 is softer now, gilded and oblique, falling across the linoleum floor in long gold ribbons.

Elisa sleeps, draws shallow breaths.
One hand is curled like a question mark on the thin hospital blanket.

Erica hasn't moved in twenty minutes.
She watches her aunt's face, cataloging the lines etched by years and fire and silence.

There's a tightness in her chest that no breath can smooth out.
She had no idea that a tragedy caused by brutal violence had sent her aunt on the long trip from Bolivia to New York and only today had she really looked at her hand with the missing pinkie.
Years of ignorance…

Of course, it's too late to feel bad now.
Erica is aware of this, but if there is anything she can do to help Elisa now that she desperately needs her support, she will do it.

Her phone buzzes again with a text message.
This time, she checks it.
It's Claire.

CALL ME WHEN YOU CAN. NO FIRE – PROMISE.

A faint smile twitches across Erica’s lips.
Claire knows her too well.
She rises, slipping out of the room quietly, careful not to disturb the stillness.

Dr. Parker is standing by the window, scribbling something into a chart.

"She doesn’t remember much," she says.

He turns, giving her a quiet, understanding nod. "No. But she remembered you, right?"

Erica exhales, almost a laugh. “Barely.”
A bitter truth.
Perhaps it is better if Elisa doesn't remember Erica doing little else beyond sending money, a meager offering compared to the years of absence.

"She knew your mother," Parker offers gently. "That’s something. My patients tend to remember the distant past better than what happened recently."

A beat passes.
She glances at the room behind her. "She can’t go back home."
Whatever happened between them, no matter how little affection she felt for her aunt, she has a responsibility.
A duty.

"No," Parker agrees. "As I said earlier, I wouldn't recommend it."

"I'll look into care facilities," Erica says, her voice measured but softer now. "Some place with proper staff. Spanish-speaking, if possible. Familiar meals. Safety."

He watches her a moment longer. "That's generous of you."

"It's necessary," she says. Then, quieter, "I should've done it sooner." She adjusts the cuffs of her blouse, her fingertips touching the Rolex on her wrist.
In moments like these, the engraved steel feels less like an empowerment and more like an anchor, its weight reminding her of the creed “Stand for something or fall for anything”.

There’s a subtle shift in the physician's eyes. "Most people wait until they're forced. You came when it counted."

Erica nods but doesn't reply.
She looks tired, less composed, as if something inside her had bent but not broken.

"She still has some fight in her," Parker says after a moment, "even if it’s scattered."

"I'll do my best to help her," Erica murmurs and extends her hand.
He shakes it again - this time, a little longer.

"If you need help navigating the placement process, I have contacts," he says.

"I'll manage." A pause. "But thank you, Dr. Parker."

He nods again, watching Erica walk away.


~~~


Erica makes her way down to the small hospital café – neutral walls, rows of vending machines, a glass case with sandwiches that probably taste like cardboard with mayonnaise. The fluorescent lights hum, an irritating buzz that grates on her nerves.
She doesn’t order anything to eat.
Just sits at a corner table, hands around a paper cup of too-hot coffee she doesn’t really want to drink, wishing for the silence of her own office.

This is where the weight settles.
Not in the sterile hospital room with its antiseptic grief, but here - in the ordinary hum of a place built to hold people's worst days.

She knows what Dr. Parker didn’t say out loud.
Placement costs money.
Long-term care isn’t something the hospital foots.
And while Erica can afford it, it’s a choice.
A decision.

How do you arrange care for a person you’ve never learned to forgive?
Her mind drifts back to something Elisa says. “You were proud. You were hers.”
A damning truth.
Proud, yes, of her mother's strength, of her own fierce independence forged in that same image.
Hers, irrevocably, bound by a love so absolute it leaves no room for anyone else.

Erica swallows.
She wonders if that's true.
If she's been living inside her mother's absence all this time, keeping score against Elisa because she had been looking for an outlet to place her grief.

A shape moves across her periphery.
She looks up.
It's Dr. Parker again.
He approaches with a manila folder in hand, his face unreadable. "I didn’t want to interrupt."

"Don't worry, you're not." Her voice is flat, but not sharp.

"I just spoke with someone from Social Services," he adds, quieter now. "They'll need a formal statement from you - next of kin - regarding plans for her care. Within the week, ideally."

Erica's spine stiffens by reflex. "Of course."

Parker hesitates. Then, almost gently, he says "You don’t have to do this alone."

Her gaze flicks to him, sharp and assessing. She's not used to kindness from strangers. It feels like a trap.
"Don't I?'

He holds her eyes. Doesn't flinch. "No. Not unless you choose to."

For a long moment, neither of them speaks.
Then she picks up the folder, stands, and straightens the cuffs of her blazer like armor.
"I'll be in touch," she says. "Within the week as required." And she walks away - out into the afternoon light, the edges of her shadow stretching long across the floor.

~~~

[LunaDog]

Tricky one. And not sure Erica knows just how to handle this and what to do next. It's appears to be a situation she's not been in before.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, especially since she'll have to take care of a person she has hated for so long.
We will see how this unfolds further, big promise.

[Jenny_S]

The black Volvo idles at the curb.

Erica doesn’t move.
12 Taunton Road.
She stares at the house across the street - the one that held her girlhood, her grief, and all the things she never said out loud.
The paint has faded.
The lawn needs trimming.
Curtains hang crooked in the front windows.

It looks smaller now.
Not because it is - but because she's bigger than the girl she used to be.

She sits there for another minute, then reaches into her bag.
Her fingers close around the old keychain: worn leather, initials barely legible. Her father's, before it became hers.

With a deep breath, she steps out of the car.
The air smells like old mulch and something wet beneath the soil.

As she crosses the street, every footstep feels like a verdict.
At the walkway, her shoes crunch over pebbles.
The gate sticks, but she pushes through it.
The porch creaks beneath her.
She fits the key into the lock, heart beating louder than it should.

She turns it.
The door opens.

The house exhales, a deep, musty sigh of neglected air and forgotten memories.
And so does she, a tension she hasn’t realized she held for so long releasing with a quiet shudder.


~~~


Erica steps inside and closes the door behind her carefully.
The house smells the same.
Dust, and whatever detergent Elisa used religiously for the last decade or so.
Something floral but chemical.
Erica used to hate it.
To her, it is the stench of the past. Preserved. Stale.

She doesn't turn on the lights right away, letting the dim hallway adjust to her.
Her hand still rests on the doorframe, the wood cool and rough beneath her palm, like she’s bracing herself against the weight of memory.

The air feels heavy.
Like the rooms have been holding their breath - or if Elisa didn't air the rooms a lot lately.
She kicks off her shoes, walks in slow.
Still, her footsteps sound too loud on the hardwood floors.
Every creak is a small betrayal. Every surface is too familiar - unchanged, and yet somehow strange in the stillness.

The living room is exactly as she remembers.
That low coffee table with the glass top.
The armchair with its worn floral print, sagging at the arms.
The TV remote balanced like a ritual object on the armrest.
Even the afghan is folded the same way, corners crisp.

Erica pauses in the doorway.
There’s a book open on the side table - face-down, its spine cracked.
She walks over and picks it up: a historical mystery.
Elisa liked those.
She turns it over.
A bookmark tucked in a third of the way through, a bus ticket from two years ago.
Erica’s throat tightens.
She doesn’t know if Elisa ever gets to finish the book.

The thought of all the unfinished stories, forgotten plots, that now make up Elisa’s life, is a fresh ache.

In the kitchen, the light above the sink is still burned out.
Erica notices it like a punch.
She pointed it out the last time she visited. Years ago.
Elisa promised she'd fix it.
She never did.

The fridge hums. A low, relentless sound that seems louder in the quiet.

Erica leans against the counter.
The laminate is cold under her hands.
She doesn’t move for a while.

Eventually, she pulls open the cabinet above the sink, searching automatically.
There it is: the tin of loose chamomile Elisa used to drink when she couldn’t sleep.

Without even looking, she walks over to the small table in the breakfast nook and faces the window.
Outside, the garden is overgrown.
Wild roses have climbed the fence in a feverish sprawl.
Ivy curls up the trellis like it’s trying to swallow it whole.
She remembers planting that trellis when she was fifteen.

This house is full of things left unsaid.
She looks around - really looks - for the first time in years.

And it hits her, sharp and sudden:
If Elisa never comes back here, it will be her job to decide what to do.
What stays.
And what goes.

Of course, the house is quiet now.
Too quiet.

Not the peace of solitude, but the kind of stillness that gathers in places left behind.
The kind that seeps into floorboards and curtains and the narrow cracks between memories.

~~~

[LunaDog]

The house of Erica's childhood. And legally her property now, i guess.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, yes, the house is hers.
She just hasn't been there in years, avoiding seeing her aunt.
We'll see what the house has to tell her.

[LunaDog]

Her Aunt who nearly burnt it to the ground!

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, in a certain way, the character of Elisa Teran is partly based on my grandmother, who suffered from dementia, and who, once, put a pot on the stove to cook potatoes, but forgot to fill the pot. It was red hot and smoking when my father noticed the smell as he came by to take the trash out or something like that.
Of course, she didn't do it on purpose.
She just forgot.

My grandma spent her final years in the care home where I was working at that time, so I saw her pretty much each day and she believed we were living together.
RIP grandma.
I miss you a lot.

[LunaDog]

Dementia. A tragic disease for which there is no cure, and one is mortified when it takes hold of somebody you love. Changes them beyond recognition, as you say something that becomes difficult in itself for the 'victim.' And now seems to hold my own mother in its vice like grip.

Please believe me here, i wasn't suggesting that Erica's aunt had deliberately nearly set the house on fire. As you say, she purely, and innocently, forgot. Not that fire would respect that, of course.

[Jenny_S]

Dear @LunaDog, being around dementia patients in my line of work, I see the disease's ugly sides too often. I wish you lots of strength and love supporting your mom.

[LunaDog]

I wish you lots of strength and love supporting your mom.

Thank you. I know enough about you to believe that you mean EVERY word here.

[Jenny_S]

Erica pauses at the threshold of her father's study.
The door is half-closed, just as he always left it – out of habit, not secrecy.
A gentle boundary, a silent invitation, like so many things about him.
He never imposed, only offered.
She places a hand on the worn brass doorknob, the metal cool against her skin, and pushes it open.

It smells the same.
Even after all these years: the faint musk of old leather and wood polish, the sharper tang of ink and yellowed paper.

A thin shaft of sunlight cuts across the room, illuminating the dust motes hanging still in the air. They move slowly, as if time itself resists her presence.

She steps inside.


~~~


The room is as she remembers it.
Bookshelves flank the walls, filled to near-bursting - some volumes upright, others stacked or leaned like tired old men.
The leather wingback chair still faces the hearth, though the fireplace has been cold for years.
It's the chair in which she had sat as a child hundreds of times, her legs dangling, with her father perched on the little foot stool, telling her stories: Achill and the Myrmidons, Ulysses and the Trojan Horse, his return to Ithaca...

And in the far corner, near the window that once framed the garden like a painting, stands her father's old rolltop desk.

One more step into the study and she stands where she stood when her father had asked her to join him here on her graduation day.

Erica was still dressed in her gown and had her mortarboard hat tucked under her arm.
The setting sun bathed the study in warm light and her father looked at her with pride, remembering how far his little girl had come.

His voice deep but kind, he told her that knowing the law was one thing, but that it takes a strong moral compass to use it.
Then he walked over to that rolltop desk where she knew that he kept only the most important documents and things and from the top left drawer he took this green box embossed with a gold crown emblem.

When he gave it to her, Erica remembers how surprisingly heavy it was, being made from wood, covered in green leather.
Inside the box rested the Rolex dive watch he had purchased for her, a sturdy, reliable timepiece with a steel case and bracelet.
She took it out of the box and felt its weight, ran her fingers over the cool, smooth metal, and when she turned it over she saw the engraving on the back of the case: Stand for something or fall for anything.

"These words," her father said, looking her in the eyes, "are more than just a motto. They’re an oath - a commitment to live by your principles, no matter the cost."
Erica realized that her father wasn't just giving her an expensive watch.
With the Rolex he passed something on to her - his legacy, a compass for her soul - and as she felt the true meaning of this gift, she promised him - herself - that she would live by this creed, come hell or high water, making them the bedrock of her personal integrity.

She has worn this watch since that day and it has been with her through thick and thin.
It got some scratches, but it keeps perfect time and whenever she looks at it, the Rolex reminds her of who her father wanted her to be.
Now, standing in her father's study, she can hear his voice echo in her mind, and she wipes a tear out of her eye.


~~~


Erica crosses over to the rolltop desk slowly, almost reverently, letting her fingers trail along the wood grain of the desk’s curved lid.
It’s oak, solid and heavy.
A monument to a different kind of work - long before billable hours and deposition transcripts.

She exhales, then pushes the rolltop back.
It slides open with a sound like a sigh.

Inside, everything is where he left it.
There are stacks of neatly organized papers.
His fountain pen in its brass holder, the ink now dry and caking the tank, and beside it, resting in the stationary tray, his .45 pistol – the familiar steel a cold, dark presence.
It’s the same gun he taught her to shoot with when she was thirteen, its weight oddly comforting in her small hands even then.
A box of ammunition sits next to it.

Face down, on the writing mat, there's a photograph like it’s been waiting for her.
She hesitates, then reaches for it as if she's unearthing something sacred.

It’s a picture of her mother.
Young.
Barefoot in the garden.
Holding a baby in one arm - Erica, round-cheeked and squirming.
Her father must have taken the photo out there behind the house.
The image is a little faded at the edges, but the joy in it hasn’t dimmed.

Erica sits down heavily in the desk chair, the photograph trembling slightly in her fingers.
The worn leather sighs beneath her, a sound of shared sorrow.
Her chest tightens, a vise squeezing her breath.
Something in her unclenches – years of tightly bound emotions – and in the release, there’s not the jagged pain of fresh loss, but the gentler, older kind of grief.
The kind that lingers in the quiet corners of a house, waiting for an invitation to resurface.
The kind that waits.

She puts the photo gently into her blazer’s inside pocket and leans back, eyes closed. The Rolex on her wrist catches the light. The engraving seems to burn softly against her skin, silently shouting her creed: Stand for something or fall for anything.

Opening her eyes, she looks around the study again.
Really looks.
The wallpaper is peeling away at the edges.
The carpet is frayed near the hearth.
One of the built-in shelves sags from the weight of too many books.

But the sunlight still pours in, a generous golden wash.
The air, though dusty, holds the lingering scent of her father.
This room, despite its wear, feels solid.
Resilient.
Like it’s been waiting for her.

This is the place where she grew up.

This house isn’t just full of ghosts.
It’s full of history.
Of beginnings.
Of her parents - and of herself.
She exhales slowly.

What if… what if this could be home again?

The thought, unbidden, settles in her mind, startling her.
It’s a whisper she’d never allowed herself to hear before, buried beneath years of self-imposed distance and professional polish.

Home.

Not just a house she inherited, not just a problem to manage, but a place to live.
A place to belong.
The commute to the city wouldn't be that bad.
She would be half an hour closer to Bedford, too, making seeing Lea on the weekends a lot easier.

~~~

[LunaDog]

Interesting thoughts. Maybe Erica ought to REALLY consider this. And the kittens would LOVE it.