Chương 9
“What?”
“A property.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know all the details.”
“You were married to him.”
“He didn’t tell me everything.”
That, I believed.
Dad had hidden worry behind jokes.
Bills behind newspapers.
Pain behind phrases like nothing to fuss over.
“What happened?”
“The deal failed.”
“How badly?”
“He owed money.”
“To a bank?”
“No.”
Ryan straightened.
“Who?”
Mom rubbed her palms together.
“A man named Victor Hale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Ryan’s expression said the same.
“He loaned Dad money privately,” Mom said.
“How much?”
“More than Dad could pay back.”
“How much, Mom?”
Her lips parted.
Closed.
Then she said, “One hundred and twenty thousand.”
Ryan whispered, “Jesus.”
I sat down because my knees had stopped feeling reliable.
Mom continued before either of us could speak.
“Your father thought he would recover it.”
“Recover what?”
“The investment.”
“What was the property?”
“Some commercial renovation.”
“Where?”
“I told you I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe Dad owed a stranger one hundred twenty thousand dollars and you don’t know why?”
“I found out after he died.”
The room went quiet.
The refrigerator hummed from the kitchen.
Somewhere outside, a lawn mower started.
I looked at Dad’s photograph.
Two months before his death, he had asked me for five thousand dollars to cover something before Mom saw it.
Not a mistake.
Not an emergency.
A debt.
“What did Victor Hale do after Dad died?”
Mom looked at me.
“He came here.”
Ryan stopped moving.
“When?”
“After the funeral.”
“How long after?”
“A week.”
“What did he want?”
“What do you think?”
My mouth went dry.
“Dad’s money.”
Mom nodded.
“And you paid him with the insurance.”
Her eyes filled, but no tears fell.
“I paid what your father owed.”
“That still doesn’t explain my name.”
Her face tightened again.
“No.”
“Then explain it.”
She sat slowly.
For several seconds, she stared at the rug.
When she finally spoke, her voice had almost disappeared.
“Victor wouldn’t take the money directly from me.”
Ryan frowned.
“Why not?”
“Because he said it would create problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“I don’t know.”
“That sounds illegal.”
“I know what it sounds like.”
“So what did you do?”
Mom looked at me.
“I used an account Victor gave me.”
My stomach dropped.
“And he told you it was mine?”
“No.”
“Then why was my name on it?”
She swallowed.
“Because I put it there.”
Ryan said, “What?”
Mom did not look at him.
“I put your name on the transfer instructions.”
I stood again.
“Why?”
Her voice cracked.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“If anyone ever looked into the money, I didn’t want it connected to me.”
The room went completely still.
I stared at her.
“So you connected it to me.”
She began crying then.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just tears sliding down a face that suddenly seemed smaller than it had that morning.
“I never thought anyone would come after you.”
“You used my name to hide a six-figure payment to a man you barely knew.”
“I was trying to protect the house.”
“You were trying to protect yourself.”
“I was protecting this family.”
I laughed once.
It sounded horrible in the quiet room.
Ryan stepped toward her.
“Mom, was the account actually Emily’s?”
“No.”
“Whose was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You sent over a hundred thousand dollars to an account and you don’t know whose it was?”
“Victor gave me the routing information.”
“And you just wrote Emily’s name?”
“He told me the account holder name could be whatever I needed for my records.”
Ryan stared at her.
“That is not how banks work.”
“I didn’t know that.”
I looked at her.
“You knew enough to use my name instead of yours.”
She flinched.
That was the first thing all day that made me feel worse instead of better.
I wanted her to deny it.
I wanted Carl to have mixed up a document.
I wanted some harmless clerical error that would let me stay angry about Mother’s Day and nothing else.
Instead, my mother had been carrying a secret for four years and had chosen my name as the place to bury it.
“Why did you tell Ryan I knew?” I asked.
Mom wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand.
Her answer came too slowly.
“Because I needed him to stop asking.”
Ryan stared at her as if he no longer recognized the woman in front of him.
“You used Emily’s name because you needed me to stop asking questions?”
Mom pressed a tissue under one eye.
“I panicked.”
“That is not panic.”
His voice stayed low, which somehow made it sharper.
“That is throwing her under the bus.”
“I didn’t think you would believe it.”
He laughed without humor.
“That’s your defense?”
Mom looked at me instead.
“You know how your brother is.”
Ryan actually stepped back.
“Oh, wow.”
“Don’t start.”
“No, please.”
He pointed at himself.
“Explain me to me.”
I should have interrupted.
Instead, I let them fight for several seconds because part of me was tired of being the designated adult in every room.
Mom stood.
“You both came here looking for reasons to attack me.”
“We came here because there was a six-figure transfer using Emily’s name,” Ryan said.
“I told you what happened.”
“You told us part of what happened.”
“That’s all there is.”
I looked at her.
“No, it isn’t.”
Her face tightened.
“Emily.”
“Carl said four years ago you asked whether the transfer could be reversed.”
She went still.
Ryan turned to her.
“You did?”
Mom sat again.
The tissue in her hand had torn down the middle.
“I was trying to fix things.”
“Why four years ago?” I asked.
She did not answer.
“Dad had already been dead two years.”
“I know.”
“If Victor got his money after Dad died, what was there to reverse?”
Her eyes dropped.
That was enough.
I felt something inside me settle into place.
May you like
Not an answer.
A certainty that there was another answer.
