Chương 3
There was something else in the room now.
Something larger than a stolen set of keys.
Grandpa seemed to feel it too.
He looked again at the tracking history.
“Diane, how many times have you driven the SUV?”
Mom’s expression sharpened.
“I don’t see why that matters.”
“Answer me.”
“A few.”
“Where?”
“Errands.”
He turned the phone toward her.
“Columbia?”
Mom froze.
I looked at the screen.
There was a trip I had not noticed among the others.
A weekday departure just after seven in the morning.
The SUV traveled almost ninety miles south, remained in Columbia for four hours, then returned.
Ava glanced at Mom.
This time, the fear passed in the opposite direction.
“What were you doing in Columbia?” Grandpa asked.
Mom rubbed the kitchen towel between her fingers.
She had carried it into the study without realizing it and was still holding it.
“Nothing.”
Grandpa’s face became very still.
“People do not usually drive three hours round trip to do nothing.”
Mom looked at me, then Ava, then the closed study door.
For the first time that evening, she seemed less worried about being blamed than about something being discovered.
Grandpa saw it too.
His thumb moved across the screen.
“Interesting,” he said quietly.
I leaned forward.
“What?”
He did not answer immediately.
He opened the Columbia trip and zoomed in on the destination.
The map resolved into a cluster of office buildings near a medical center.
Mom took one involuntary step toward the desk.
Grandpa looked up at her.
“Why did my SUV spend four hours outside the Carolina Financial Recovery Center?”
Mom’s face went completely white.
Mom’s hand tightened around the towel until her knuckles whitened.
Ava stopped looking angry.
She looked frightened again.
Grandpa waited.
The room seemed to contract around the three of them.
I looked from the map to my mother.
“What is that place?”
Mom shook her head once.
“It’s not what it sounds like.”
Grandpa’s voice stayed even.
“What does it sound like?”
She looked at him sharply.
“You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Yes.”
He set the phone on the desk.
“I’m asking you a direct question.”
Mom laughed under her breath, but there was no humor in it.
“It was an appointment.”
“For what?”
She stared at the bookshelves behind him.
“For financial counseling.”
Ava shifted.
Grandpa noticed.
“So Ava knew.”
Mom said nothing.
I looked at my sister.
She would not meet my eyes.
A strange heaviness entered my chest.
“Why did you need financial counseling?”
Mom’s answer came too quickly.
“Everyone has bills.”
“Everyone doesn’t drive ninety miles in someone else’s birthday present to meet a financial recovery company.”
“Amelia.”
“No.”
I heard the edge in my own voice and didn’t pull it back.
“No more saying my name like I’m misbehaving for asking what’s happening.”
Mom lowered the towel.
For a second, she looked tired rather than defensive.
It made her seem older.
Then the armor came back.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
I almost laughed.
That phrase again.
The family’s favorite locked door.
You wouldn’t understand.
I had heard it when Ava got away with things I didn’t.
I had heard it when Mom used money from my college savings for one of Ava’s emergencies.
I had heard it when I asked why my aunt stopped coming for Christmas after an argument nobody would explain.
Now it was sitting in Grandpa’s study between a damaged SUV and a debt office.
Grandpa folded his hands over the top of his cane.
“Try her.”
Mom looked at him.
“What?”
“Try explaining it to her.”
She pressed her lips together.
Ava stood up again.
“I’m going home.”
Grandpa did not raise his voice.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Then act like one and sit down.”
Ava flinched.
Mom turned on him.
“You don’t get to speak to her like that.”
Grandpa’s eyes hardened.
“She lied at my dinner table, took property that wasn’t hers, damaged it, and apparently helped conceal whatever you were doing in Columbia.”
“You don’t know what she helped with.”
“Then enlighten me.”
Mom looked toward the door as if considering leaving with Ava.
I wondered if she would.
Part of me wanted her to.
Another part wanted answers badly enough to hate myself for needing them.
Ava sat back down.
Mom remained standing.
Finally, she dropped the towel onto the arm of the chair.
“The house is behind.”
I did not understand.
Grandpa did.
His face changed.
“How far?”
Mom swallowed.
“Three months.”
My stomach went cold.
“Our house?”
Mom looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Three months on what?”
“The mortgage.”
I stared at her.
The house had been part of my life since I was eleven.
Brick front.
Two maple trees that shed leaves into the gutters every October.
A kitchen drawer that never closed properly.
The hallway where Ava and I had measured our heights against the doorframe until Mom painted over the pencil marks.
It had never occurred to me that it could disappear.
Grandpa leaned forward.
“How did you get three months behind?”
Mom’s eyes flashed.
“It happened.”
“No.”
His voice remained calm.
“Rain happens.”
He pointed lightly toward the desk.
“Mortgage arrears do not just happen.”
She looked away.
I could see her breathing change.
Ava spoke softly.
“Mom had some expenses.”
Grandpa turned toward her.
“What expenses?”
Ava’s jaw tightened.
“Stuff.”
“Specifics.”
“Dad,” Mom snapped.
Grandpa did not look at her.
Ava rubbed her palms over her thighs.
“There were repairs.”
“To the house?”
“Some.”
“What else?”
“Why are you interrogating me?”
“Because your mother is refusing to answer.”
Mom picked up the towel again.
It had become something for her hands to do.
“There were credit cards.”
I blinked.
“How much?”
“That’s private.”
“We live in the same house.”
“You don’t pay the mortgage.”
“No, but apparently I should have been worried about whether we were going to have one.”
Mom’s mouth tightened.
Grandpa interrupted before she could answer.
“How much debt?”
May you like
She took a long breath.
“About forty-eight.”
