Stories of Tie Up Games

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.

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.

~~~

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

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

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.


~~~

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

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.

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

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

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.


~~~

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