27. Corbin

"Where the hell is my car?" I'm sure this is where it was parked."

"What's the matter, Dad?" I stood in the spot and looked down at my ticket again and then back up at the number on the pole.

Brian and Cam had already gone to Brian's car which is how they'd driven here a few days ago. I came on my own while my daughter and her Mom drove with my youngest son and his wife because she had planned to stay longer than the rest of us and was going to Uber back to her place upon return.

But now she was married, granted it was to someone else, but still. Why the hell are my thoughts rambling? "What the hell happened to my car?" The others stopped on their way out of the parking garage when they saw us just standing there, and something was going on with them as well. It's like the world had gone mad or somebody was pranking the Archers.

"What the hell is all over you, Brian?" He was shining from head to toe and the windows of his Escalade looked like the Macy's Day Parade. There was confetti or glitter or whatever the hell the kids call it all over him and everyone in the damn vehicle. Brian looked pissed.

"Glitter bomb!" That's all he said, and it made no sense. "What's your deal?"

"My car is gone." There was a car in the spot where mine was supposed to be, but it made no sense. "Trey, give me a ride to the gate so I can clear this up."

"Come on!" I followed him with Gigi, who was still down in the dumps.

Our daughter hasn't answered our calls since the day after her wedding when we told her the truth, and my wife is taking it hard. Our son-in-law had promised to talk to her but even he had made it clear that we were not to bother her until she was ready.

I know my girl is headstrong, and I expected her to have a strong reaction, but nothing like this. I almost prefer that she take a bat to my ass again than shut her mother out the way she has been. Although it's been years since Gigi started therapy, and she has come a long way, I still worry that every little thing is going to set her back.

We reached Trey's car and got in with him and Jilly upfront and Gigi and me in the backseat after loading our luggage in the trunk of his GMC truck. I was about to say something when something exploded as soon as he turned on the truck, and my mouth was filled with little pieces of crap.

"What the hell is going on?" Jilly for some reason, started laughing her ass off and shaking her head while Trey and I were furious. "Alyssa did this. I don't know how, but I'll bet my last dollar my child is behind this." I looked at Gigi like she was nuts as Trey pulled out and drove to where his brother was waiting for us.

Brian took one look at us and rolled down his window. "Alyssa!" The three boys seemed to be on the same page as their mother. My eldest daughter-in-law was the only one with any sense.

"I don't see how. She's miles away from here."

"Her husband has more money than the national deficit. My money is on them."

"Well, shit! She's crazy as it is; the last thing we need is her going rogue with all that money behind her." Cameron didn't seem too bothered though his ass was covered from his head to his chest, which was as much as I could see.

"I think what you all should be worried about isn't glitter."

"What do you mean, Penny?"

"This is your sister we're talking about. Dad, I think you can forget asking these people about your car, knowing her it's probably up a tree or in a swamp somewhere. Let's hope she didn't booby trap the houses."

Well, that put a damper on everyone else's mood and we stayed there arguing the logistics of whether or not my daughter had been responsible. "I'll tan her little hide but good if she's behind this."

"No, no one is doing shit to my sister."

"It was just a joke, Brian. Calm down; she's my daughter, after all." These boys act like she's more theirs than mine.

"She's not answering me. Jilly?" Trey asked his wife to check, which she and my other two daughters-in-law did.

"I'm not blocked."

"Me neither."

"Nor me."

"So it's just us. Daisy, why don't you call her and…"

"Nope, nope, I will not betray her trust like that. You're on your own, Bri. I'm not stepping into the line of fire."

"Damn, that's cold." The others looked at their wives, but they pretended to be interested in something else.

"So no one is going to do anything?" I asked since, at this point, they know their sister better than anyone else.

"What can we do, Dad? If her husband is backing her plays, the only thing we can do is keep our heads down until she gets it out of her system." Brian answered.

"Damn, and here we were, worried about Denny being a simp and not being able to take care of her the way we do. Now she's brought in the big guns."

"It's not going to be that bad Trey."

"Are you serious, Penny? Her twisted mind and his money are not a combination we want to fight. That's all I'm saying." They started bickering amongst each other while I was trying my best to convince myself that my kid was not capable of such things.

I still went ahead and complained about my missing car, which started a whole investigation.

It was only when they claimed that their cameras had malfunctioned for a period of time that I started to think that maybe the others were right and my daughter had used her husband's money to somehow sabotage the rest of us.

I tried calling her, but my calls kept going to voicemail, and my texts weren't being delivered. You'd think I was calling her to yell at her, but I know that that never worked in the past, and it wouldn't now. I just wanted to know what else we had to look forward to.

At this point, I wasn't mad; I figured the car would show up somewhere because who in their right mind would destroy an eighty-five-thousand-dollar car? It was not until we pulled up to my place and saw that it had been cordoned off that I started to change my mind about that. We all got out to see what the hell was going on, and my first thought was that someone had died.

There were people in hard hats milling around the house when we got there, and I started yelling at the guy who looked to be the one in charge when he asked who we were. "This is my house; what the hell are you people doing?"

"Sir, I'm sorry, but you can't enter."

"Why the hell not?"

"Your home has been condemned. Didn't your wife tell you? You have a flea infestation that our exterminators claim there's no help for."

"A flea infestation? What the hell are you talking about? I only left here a few days ago, and there was nothing wrong with my place."

"Apparently, your wife, a Mrs. Helen Archer, brought them into the house."

"Why the hell would she do that?"

"I'm not sure, sir; you'd have to ask her that."

"Where is she?"

"I have no idea. She was told not to vacate the premises until we returned to decontaminate her a few hours ago, but she wasn't here when we returned. We have to accelerate demolition because the situation is only going to get worse the longer we leave it, and that could put the other homes in danger."

My head was spinning in all different directions at once. "When did this happen?" He looked at some notes on his clipboard.

"It says here it was called in on Saturday." Okay, so that has nothing to do with Alyssa. We didn't tell her the truth until Sunday and on Saturday she was busy with the wedding.

But what the hell was Helen thinking? I pulled out my phone to call her to see what the hell was going on. I guess my phone got screwed up inflight or something because when I turned it on, there was nothing. No calls, no texts, nothing.

Which, now that I think about it isn't normal. After she didn't show up in Cabo, I was so relieved that I didn't even think about calling her, and since she wasn't harassing me, I figured she was sulking because I'd gone to the wedding ahead of her.

I didn't want her there in the first place, which she knew, and I wasn't too worried about her retaliating because I had already made up my mind to file for divorce as soon as we got back anyway, so nothing she did was going to make much difference to me at this point.

Had she somehow found out about my plans? That can't be. I'd been very careful not to give myself away in any way. She doesn't go into my room, so she wouldn't have noticed that I'd been removing my stuff over the last year or so.

There were just a few suits and toiletries left in there anyway, and only my tools and my old classic Aston Martin in the garage, along with my golf clubs; that's all that was left for me to take.

I'd planned on taking care of our finances sometime this week because that was the last thing needing doing before I filed. I didn't want it to look like I was trying to scalp her in the divorce; I know that judges don't look kindly on things like that, and though I hated the thought of giving her half my shit, it was well worth it to get away from her.

She would probably have won the house in the divorce, though, so why the hell would she do this? I looked for her number, which I didn't know by heart and it wasn't even in my contacts and didn't show up anywhere.

I started to ask the boys if they knew it, but I knew that was a lost cause because why would they? I don't think any of them ever had a conversation with her and I know for a fact that they never even said Hi to her after Alyssa went off to college.

None of my kids had crossed my door in more than five years except for the night Alyssa came over, and they came to threaten me if I called the cops on her, as if I would. I guess they knew that Helen would have, but I had put my foot down that night, which was the first time I had done so in I don't know how long.

All of this is what is leading me to believe that bitch had done this purposely. "I need to get my car out of the garage."

"Uh!" He looked like he wanted to argue, but I wasn't having it.

"The only way to do that is if you get the vehicle cleared by an exterminator. They'll have to decontaminate it and leave it in a secured location to get rid of the infestation if the fleas have made it to the garage and inside the car, which may be the case."

"How many fleas are we talking about?" Where the hell did she get fleas? We don't have any pets.

"You see that window, sir? Those are not curtains." I looked at the window he indicated, and it took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. There had to be thousands of them if that was indeed fleas.

I opened and closed my mouth, at a loss for words. My kids were already on their phones looking for help for me, which I appreciated because I didn't know what to do first. Brian was the one who came up with the idea of calling the fire department to hose down the car once we got it out, which we had to wait to do because they needed to set up a decontamination tent.

The garage was covered in the little bastards and I was fuming by the time the car had been sprayed down. Cam had gone to the vet of all places for flea spray, and we had to spray down the inside of my car, most likely destroying the upholstery in the process, before having the car hauled away to a safe place for the next few days before it would be deemed safe.

Helen was still nowhere to be found at this point, and I was beyond pissed that I had to pay out of pocket for all of this. To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure this shit isn't covered in the hundreds of thousands I've paid in home insurance. At least the crazy bitch had given me an excuse for the divorce, so there should be no backlash against my family.