Chương 11
“That is not the same thing.”
“You said he’d come home and blow everything up.”
I looked between them.
“What needed sorting?”
No one answered.
I picked up the statement with the eighty-five-thousand-dollar transfer.
“This?”
Godfrey’s silence was enough.
My mother closed her eyes.
I felt the first clear shape of it then.
Phedra’s illness had not merely been considered expensive.
It had arrived at the worst possible time for people already trying to hide where my money had gone.
Treatment would have required questions.
Receipts.
Direct payments.
Calls to me.
Maybe my return home.
Her cancer was not the beginning of their cruelty.
It was the event that threatened to expose everything else.
I looked at Selina.
“When Phedra got sick, how much of my money was actually left?”
Her lips trembled.
“Mom.”
“Not much.”
“How much?”
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Try.”
“Maybe eighteen thousand.”
I stared at her.
I had sent nearly a hundred thousand dollars over four years.
There should have been savings.
There should have been enough for appointments, food, transportation, medicine.
Instead there had been eighteen thousand dollars left when my wife was diagnosed.
“What happened to the rest?”
Selina’s voice cracked.
“Life happened.”
“No.”
I shook my head.
“Numbers happened.”
She looked almost offended.
“You think you can reduce everything to numbers?”
“When eighty thousand dollars disappears, yes.”
“I raised two sons.”
“And I paid for this house.”
“I kept this family together.”
“And Phedra slept outside.”
Her palm hit the table.
“She was not outside.”
“In a shed.”
“It had electricity.”
For a second, no one moved.
Selina seemed to hear herself only after the words were gone.
Godfrey looked away.
I stared at my mother.
“It had electricity.”
She pressed her lips together.
I stood.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For making sure I never question what I saw again.”
I gathered the copies she had given me.
Godfrey stepped between me and the hallway.
“You can’t take those.”
“They’re copies.”
“They’re family financial records.”
“Then I’m family.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
He lowered his voice.
“You said you were considering investing.”
“I am.”
“After this?”
I looked at him.
There it was.
The fear beneath everything.
Not whether Phedra would live.
Not whether I could forgive him.
Whether the four hundred thousand dollars was still possible.
I let several seconds pass.
“Yes.”
His eyes flickered.
Selina stared at me.
“You are?”
“I told you I’m not making decisions angry.”
Godfrey searched my face.
He wanted to believe me badly enough to do most of the work himself.
“I need complete records.”
“You’ll get them.”
“Every account.”
He hesitated.
“Fine.”
“Every transfer involving Victor.”
His jaw tightened.
“Fine.”
“And the old phone.”
The room froze.
Selina looked at Godfrey.
I saw it happen.
She had not known he still had it.
He noticed me noticing.
“I don’t have it.”
“Phedra found it, then it disappeared.”
“So?”
“So she didn’t leave the house.”
“She could have misplaced it.”
“She was sleeping in a shed with six shirts and a bucket.”
“Damian.”
“Find the phone.”
“I said I don’t have it.”
I nodded.
“Then you won’t mind if somebody else looks for it.”
His eyes sharpened.
“Who?”
I slipped the statements into the envelope.
“That depends on what the records show.”
I walked around him.
This time he let me pass.
Selina followed me to the porch.
“Damian.”
I stopped at the steps.
Her voice was smaller now.
“Victor didn’t only threaten to tell you.”
I turned.
She had both arms folded across herself.
“What else?”
“He said he had proof of something Winston did.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“I never saw it.”
“Proof of what?”
She looked toward the dining room, making sure Godfrey was not behind her.
Then she whispered, “He said Winston paid him to stay away from you.”
I said nothing.
Selina’s eyes filled.
“He said your father bought him out.”
The sentence struck differently than everything else had.
Not because I believed it.
Because part of me could imagine Winston doing exactly that.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of fear.
Out of love twisted into control.
The same kind of love Selina had been using as an excuse all evening.
I opened the SUV door.
“Did you pay Victor because you were afraid he’d expose Winston?”
“I paid because I didn’t want you losing your father twice.”
I looked at her.
“Then you should have trusted me to decide who my father was.”
She flinched.
I got into the SUV.
Before closing the door, I said, “And don’t call Phedra tonight.”
Selina’s mouth hardened again.
“I have a right to speak to her.”
“No.”
“You cannot keep me from my daughter-in-law.”
“She said she doesn’t feel safe with you.”
That landed harder than accusation.
My mother stepped back.
“She said that?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since I had come home, Selina looked genuinely old.
I closed the door.
Halfway to the hospital, my phone rang.
It was Lena.
“I got the preliminary bank documents you authorized.”
I pulled into a gas station before answering properly.
“What did you find?”
“A pattern.”
My hand tightened around the steering wheel.
“What kind?”
“Your transfers did not simply go into your mother’s household account.”
I watched cars move beneath the fluorescent canopy.
“Where did they go?”
“Some stayed there.”
She paused.
“Some went to your brother’s business.”
“I know.”
“Some went to another account associated with your mother.”
“I know about that too.”
Another pause.
“And some went somewhere you haven’t mentioned.”
My pulse picked up.
“Where?”
“To an account in Phedra’s name.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“She had no money.”
“The account received more than thirty thousand dollars over two years.”
I thought of Phedra gathering broken porcelain with bare hands.
The storage shed.
The broken sandals.
The paper cup of broth.
“She doesn’t know about it.”
Lena’s voice stayed calm.
May you like
“Then we need to find out who does.”
I stayed in the gas station parking lot after Lena ended the call.
