Chương 4
I frowned.
“Forty-eight hundred?”
Nobody spoke.
My stomach dropped.
“Forty-eight thousand?”
Mom stared at the floor.
Ava whispered, “It’s not all hers.”
Grandpa’s gaze moved to Ava.
“Whose is it?”
Ava’s face crumpled slightly.
There it was.
The truth, or at least another piece of it.
I looked at my sister.
“How much is yours?”
She shook her head.
“Ava.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“I said I don’t know.”
Mom stepped in.
“Most of it is under my name.”
“That is not what I asked.”
My voice was trembling now.
I hated that.
I hated how easily my body betrayed me when I was trying to stay composed.
Ava stared at the carpet.
“Maybe twenty.”
The room went quiet.
“Twenty thousand dollars?”
She nodded.
I sat back.
I tried to fit that number around the sister I knew.
She bought clothes constantly.
Not designer things, usually.
Just endless packages.
Shoes.
Makeup.
Ring lights.
Restaurant bills.
Weekend trips she called networking.
I had assumed Mom subsidized most of it.
Apparently she had.
Just not with money they possessed.
Grandpa rubbed a hand over his jaw.
“What did you spend twenty thousand dollars on?”
Ava’s voice was barely audible.
“My business.”
I looked at her.
“What business?”
She snapped her head toward me.
“My branding business.”
“You don’t have an office.”
“I don’t need an office.”
“You barely have clients.”
“You don’t know anything about my clients.”
“I know you’ve been borrowing money from Mom.”
“I was investing.”
“In what?”
“Content.”
The word sounded ridiculous in that room.
Grandpa apparently agreed.
“What does twenty thousand dollars of content look like?”
Ava’s cheeks reddened.
“A website.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand.”
“Photography?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“About four.”
“Four thousand dollars for photographs?”
“They were professional.”
I stared at her.
“For Instagram?”
“They weren’t just for Instagram.”
Mom interrupted.
“She was building a brand.”
Grandpa looked at her.
“With borrowed money.”
“With startup money.”
“From credit cards.”
Mom exhaled sharply.
“We made decisions.”
There was something revealing in the pronoun.
We.
I looked at both of them.
“You knew all of this?”
Mom’s face twisted.
“Of course I knew.”
“And you kept letting her spend?”
“She was trying to become independent.”
The irony was so enormous I had no answer for it.
Grandpa did.
“She became independent with your credit limit?”
Mom glared at him.
“You have always been hard on her.”
“No.”
His voice softened in a way that somehow made it worse.
“I have expected her to encounter reality.”
Ava stood again.
“This is why I don’t tell you anything.”
Grandpa looked at her.
“You did tell me something.”
His eyes flicked toward the dining room.
“You told me hard work bought you an SUV.”
Ava’s face went red.
I looked away.
Even angry, I felt embarrassed for her.
That was the problem with family.
Someone could hurt you deeply and you could still feel pain when they were humiliated.
Mom touched Ava’s shoulder.
“She was excited.”
“She lied.”
“She made a stupid caption.”
“She lied.”
Grandpa’s tone did not change.
Mom’s hand fell.
Grandpa picked up his phone again.
“How does the mortgage fit into the credit cards?”
Mom said nothing.
He continued.
“Did you stop making house payments to service the cards?”
Her silence was answer enough.
I felt suddenly nauseated.
“How long?”
Mom rubbed at a stain on the towel that wasn’t there.
“A few months.”
“You said three missed payments.”
“Before that I was paying late.”
Grandpa’s face tightened.
“For how long?”
“Since spring.”
It was September.
The ceiling fan clicked overhead.
Click.
Click.
Click.
I had lived under that roof all summer without knowing any of this.
I had bought groceries because Mom complained prices were getting ridiculous.
I had paid the electric bill once when she said she forgot.
I had given Ava two hundred dollars in June because she said a client payment had been delayed.
I had believed all of those things separately.
Together, they looked different.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Mom looked genuinely surprised.
“What would you have done?”
The question hurt more than an insult.
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly.”
“No.”
I stood again.
“That’s not the same thing.”
Mom stared at me.
“You have a regular paycheck and student loans.”
“So?”
“So I wasn’t going to put this on you.”
“But you were fine taking my car.”
“That is different.”
“How?”
“Ava needs to get her business working.”
“And I need to get to my actual job.”
Ava made a sound of disgust.
“There it is.”
I turned.
“What?”
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like my work isn’t real.”
I stared at her.
“You just told us you put twenty thousand dollars on credit cards trying to make it real.”
Her face changed.
I regretted the cruelty as soon as I said it.
Not because it was entirely false.
Because it was designed to wound.
Ava looked down.
Mom immediately turned on me.
“That was unnecessary.”
“I know.”
The apology came before pride could stop it.
Ava looked surprised.
So did Mom.
I sat again.
“I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Ava did not answer.
Grandpa watched us quietly.
The tension dropped by half a degree.
Then his phone buzzed on the desk.
He glanced at the screen.
His brow furrowed.
“What?”
Mom sounded almost panicked.
Grandpa opened the notification.
“It’s from the vehicle.”
Ava went pale.
Grandpa looked toward her.
“The passenger door is open.”
For one second, nobody understood.
Then Ava grabbed her purse.
“My bag.”
“You have your purse,” I said.
“Not that bag.”
She was already moving toward the study door.
Grandpa rose more slowly.
“What bag?”
Ava stopped with her hand on the knob.
Her breathing had gone shallow.
Mom stared at her.
“Ava.”
My sister closed her eyes.
That was when I knew Mom did not know this part.
“What is in the SUV?” Grandpa asked.
Ava turned around.
Her face had lost all color.
“Nothing.”
May you like
Grandpa’s gaze sharpened.
“Someone is opening a vehicle parked beside my house, and you suddenly remembered a bag inside it.”
