Chương 5
“Why?”
My father breathed into the phone.
“Because he doesn’t know everything.”
“That is becoming obvious.”
“Claire, please.”
“What exactly doesn’t he know?”
“I can’t do this while I’m standing in the showroom.”
“Then walk outside.”
“I have customers.”
“You called me.”
A chair scraped somewhere behind him.
Then a door opened and closed, and the acoustics changed.
I pictured the narrow employee hallway leading to the loading dock.
When I was a teenager, Dad used to escape there whenever Mom started criticizing somebody in front of customers.
He had always specialized in finding doors.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
“What doesn’t Nathan know?”
“That there’s a problem with the ownership records.”
I stared at my office wall.
My company had framed photographs of freight terminals along the corridor, all polished floors and perfectly lined containers.
Nothing in those photographs looked complicated.
“How long have you known there was a problem?”
“I didn’t know it was a problem.”
“Dad.”
“I’m trying to explain.”
“Then explain.”
He exhaled sharply.
“Your grandfather set up those shares.”
That was new.
“My mother’s father?”
“Yes.”
Grandpa Vale had died when I was fifteen.
The store carried his last name because he had founded it with my grandmother in the seventies, back when the business was a single showroom selling dining sets and bedroom furniture.
“He wanted you girls to have a stake in the company eventually,” Dad said.
“Eventually?”
“He set up the transfer structure before he got sick.”
“And nobody told me.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I turned eighteen before I left.”
“There were plans to explain it.”
I almost smiled at the absurdity.
“Were those plans scheduled before or after Mom toasted my ugliness?”
“Claire.”
“No, go ahead.”
“That day was bad.”
“That day was honest.”
He went quiet.
I pressed my thumb into the edge of my desk.
“What happened to the shares?”
“Your mother and I managed them.”
“After I became an adult?”
“Yes.”
“Without telling me.”
“We believed you were coming back.”
I closed my eyes.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You left without warning.”
“I left after eighteen years of warning.”
“Fine.”
His voice hardened for the first time.
“You left.”
There it was.
A small piece of the old family machinery clicking into place.
Cause became my departure.
Responsibility became my distance.
Their choices became something my absence had made necessary.
I let him continue.
“We had bills,” he said.
“The store went through a terrible period after the recession.”
“That was years later.”
“I’m telling you it wasn’t simple.”
“Did you sign my name?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“Did Mom?”
Silence.
My stomach turned.
“Dad.”
“I never watched her do it.”
“That is not the same answer.”
“No.”
“Did you know she was signing documents for me?”
“I knew documents were being handled.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“That is an impressive sentence.”
“You weren’t here.”
“So you invented me.”
“No.”
“You created an email address in my name.”
“I didn’t.”
“Who did?”
“I think Madison set it up.”
That hit differently.
I stood so quickly my chair rolled backward.
“Madison?”
“She handled more of the administrative side once she started working full-time.”
“When was that?”
“About eight years ago.”
“So she was twenty-two.”
“Yes.”
“And she knew I owned shares.”
“Yes.”
The room seemed to contract around me.
My sister had been sixteen when I left.
For years I had preserved a small, reluctant mercy for her because she had been young and eager to survive our mother’s approval.
Twenty-two was not sixteen.
“Did Madison sign my name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying you don’t know.”
“I’m not going to accuse my daughter of something I did not see.”
“You seem very comfortable letting your other daughter be accused on paper of approving transactions she never saw.”
He inhaled slowly.
“That’s fair.”
I had never heard my father say those two words to me.
They landed without comfort.
“What happened to the money?”
“What money?”
“The distributions.”
He did not answer.
“The buyout payment.”
Another silence.
“Claire—”
“Where is the money?”
“Some of it stayed in the business.”
“Some?”
“Some was used to cover debt.”
“Whose debt?”
“The company’s.”
“Without my consent.”
“We were trying to save the store.”
“And the rest?”
He lowered his voice again.
“There were family expenses.”
I stared at the blank computer screen in front of me.
“What family expenses?”
“Your mother had medical bills.”
My anger faltered.
“What medical bills?”
“She had breast cancer.”
The words did not fit the image I carried of my mother.
Diane Mercer wore lipstick to take out the trash.
Diane Mercer insulted people while rearranging centerpiece flowers.
Diane Mercer did not get sick.
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
I sat down.
“Is she okay?”
“Yes.”
His voice softened.
“She’s been clear for five years.”
A stupid, immediate relief moved through me.
I hated it.
I was relieved my mother was alive.
I was furious that this surprised me.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We tried.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“We didn’t have your number.”
“You had email.”
“You never answered.”
“You sent two emails in twelve years.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
I looked at the ceiling.
“That really has been your lifelong problem.”
He absorbed that.
After a moment he said, “Treatment was expensive.”
“So you used my money.”
“Insurance covered most of it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No.”
The loading dock behind him echoed with a metallic bang.
Someone shouted something I could not make out.
My father did not respond.
“How much of my money went to Mom’s treatment?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Then what else?”
“Payroll sometimes.”
I almost stopped breathing.
“You used shareholder money to make payroll?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then explain exactly.”
“There were distributions allocated to you that we retained through company accounts.”
“Without telling me.”
“Yes.”
“And reported as income to me.”
He said nothing.
May you like
“Do you have any idea what that could have done to me?”
“We paid the taxes.”
