40. Chapter 40
Chapter forty
T he wide Texas sky was clear and the sunshine beat down punishingly on Eliza's skin. She had been standing in her father's driveway staring up at the home she was raised in for ten minutes but she just couldn't make herself go inside.
Those walls were full of her childhood. Everything about who she was had roots in this home. She grew into herself from all the seeds of experience planted right here. She’d always thought she’d had a decent childhood, mostly tended to by nannies and Aunt Reba, with the occasional appearance by her father. The younger versions of Eliza remembered Paul as fun and outgoing. He was always laughing and entertaining a crowd. He seemed to understand how to delight her childhood sense of wonder in the world. It wasn't until she was older that those memories morphed into ones of tending to a drunken hypocrite. The man who espoused conservatism by day and drank away his nights. A man who made Eliza's friends uncomfortable when they caught him staring a little too long. A man that she wept for at night because she was afraid this might be the drunken stupor that finally did him in, making her an orphan. It was in those later years that she began to come to terms with the fact that her father wasn't a good person. He was selfish and cruel and hate filled. So why was it such a surprise to learn he was a rapist too?
How had she not known? There had to have been clues that he was more than just a drunken idiot. Did she just ignore them as he reminded her that family came before all else except God? She knew they disagreed on everything and most days, as an adult, she was sure she didn't even like him, but she never imagined he was capable of the terrible things she’d been told. Being totally honest with herself, she'd known he was a bad person for a long time but she didn't know he was a monster.
Looking up at the columned entry and tan brick facade, she wondered if anyone else ever knew the kind of deplorable being that lived inside. Were the other homes in their gated community the same? Did they all use these monstrous displays of their wealth to hide all the dirty secrets inside? Was this how all the families in the world worked? Everyone was just living lies to hide their demons?
But then…
She thought of Judas. He was good and pure and kind. He spent thousands of years hearing the world call him terrible things. His name was synonymous in society with being the enemy. A traitor. Yet, he remained good. He didn’t let that taint or tarnish his soul. She knew he was proof of goodness and that was what she clung to as she walked to the front door and slid her key into the lock.
Her shoes tapped against the cold marble floor as she made her way across the grand entry to Paul's office.
‘Focus on what you need to do here, Eliza,’ she thought to herself. Taking a steadying breath, she flipped on the light.
She already made a phone call to connections in the prosecutor's office and Chet would be put in front of a judge to receive a bail determination before the end of the night. She'd also reached out to the bank and ensured the funds would be available to pay the bail the first second she could. Each phone call she made came with vague clues of understanding so that when she was ready to bring this case to court, the system was already tipping in her favor. The legal system really shouldn't be so easy to skew, but in this case, she was glad it was. Now, to further her position, Eliza was in Paul Arthur's home looking for any and all additional help to show his deserving guilt in bringing this whole thing on himself. Did she believe in the death penalty? Usually, no. Especially not at the hands of someone outside of the proper legal channels, but then again she'd never felt such a strong betrayal so close to home. When she was finished, the world was going to know Paul got exactly what he deserved and even that really wasn’t enough.
She had no clue what she was looking for, but she searched through every drawer, cabinet, and closet until she was satisfied there was nothing here to help her. When she cleared the office, she moved on to the next room. And the next. And the next, until she had just one room left.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been s inside the home, but she hadn’t received the phone call about bail. Arriving at the last room gave her pause. She stood outside of the doorway and stared at the closed door, willing her phone to ring and save her from this one. When it didn’t obey, she sighed, turning the knob before walking into her mother's office.
Catherine Arthur had died in a car accident when Eliza was five years old and every memory of her was foggy. She wasn’t even sure the memories were all truly hers or just her mind's retelling of stories she had been told over the years. She used to cling to any possible way to know her mother and spent many afternoons in her mother’s space. Paul had kept it exactly as Catherine left it and it was the only room in the house that’d never felt like him. It was warm and full of rich fabrics. The sun shone brightly through the large bay windows. The entire space was light and airy. As Eliza grew older the space became just a reminder that she would never know the woman that created it and being inside only made her heart ache. Shaking her head, Eliza realized that it might make the perfect room for Paul to hide any indiscretions.
Eliza made her way through the desk first, carefully running her fingers over the pens and pencils tucked inside. Being here and seeing these things for the first time in so many years felt otherworldly. It was like going back in time only to realize you still can't change what once was. The pain of heartbreak was somehow both a new stab and an old friend all at once. Tears stung her eyes, but with a deep breath, she continued anyway.
Eliza tore through the room with care, being sure to leave it just as she found it while still leaving no stone unturned. Eventually, she reaches the closet. Taking a seat on the floor, legs crisscross like the young schoolgirl she was the last time she’d held her mother's hand, Eliza began unpacking boxes tucked away inside. Most of the paperwork littering the boxes was nothing more than day to day monotony. Long ago paid bills from now closed accounts, shopping lists carefully checked off through a trip to the store, appointment reminders scrawled across faded receipts. But then, resting beneath all the years of paper clutter, something else.
Eliza reached into the box to pull out a stack of leatherbound notebooks with worn pages and wear and tear of use. Laying the stack in front of her, she gently opened the cover to find line after line of delicate, handwritten journal entries. Glancing through each one, she could see the dates going back all the way to the year her parents married and carrying through to the year she lost her mother. She never even knew her mother had kept journals.
Her heart soared as she realized that her mother's entire life story was written out on these pages in her own words. Then, thumbing through the most recent journal, she came across the last entry. It was written the day of her mother's death. A chill slid down her spine and her lungs seized shut, leaving Eliza unable to breathe as the words on the page came into sharp focus before her.
Catherine Arthur may very well have been the first to discover Paul Arthur's dirty little secrets.