Chapter 4
I forwarded the message to Michael and Elena.
The sender had used a temporary address. That did not mean the message was false. It meant I could not rely on it without finding out who had sent it.
Michael asked me to tell him everything I remembered about the fifty thousand dollars.
I had sent it eight months after James died. Dad called at midnight and said a lender was about to take the family home. He sounded so ashamed that he could barely finish the sentence.
I had been sleeping badly. Every room in my apartment still held something James had touched.
I wired the money the next morning.
Dad later told me the house was safe. I never asked to see a receipt.
“It had already been sold?” I asked Michael.
“Six weeks earlier.”
I walked to the kitchen window. Snow had begun falling beyond the pines.
James used to stand there with his coffee and count the first flakes of each storm. I had come to the villa because I wanted to be near the life we had built. Dad knew that. He had chosen this place anyway.
Elena met me that afternoon at the notary’s office listed on the deed. The notary, a woman named Marisol Price, agreed to speak with us after consulting her own attorney.
“I remember the appointment,” she said. “A woman came with Mr. Bennett.”
Bennett was my maiden name. My father still used it.
“Did she show identification?” Elena asked.
“Yes. I recorded the details.”
“Was it me?” I asked.
Marisol studied my face.
“No.”
My hands went cold.
“She had similar hair,” Marisol said. “She was older than you. Mr. Bennett did most of the talking.”
I thought of Susan standing outside my study, telling me not to question him.
Marisol said the identification looked valid to her. She had preserved the appointment records, including an image captured by the office camera. Elena told her that an investigator would request them.
I called Olivia from the parking lot.
“Mom went to the notary with Dad,” I said.
“I know.”
I closed my eyes. “Since when?”
“Since this morning. David asked her directly. She said she was helping Dad with paperwork.”
“Did she say she pretended to be me?”
“No. She hung up when I asked.”
Olivia was quiet for a moment.
“We haven’t told the kids we’re coming home early.”
“You don’t have to explain every detail to them now.”
“I told Ben you’d invited us for a while. He asked why we left so suddenly.”
“You can tell him we had a disagreement about the house, and you’re going home.”
“I’m sorry I told him you invited us.”
I leaned against the truck.
“Thank you for telling me.”
It was not forgiveness. It was the first honest conversation we had managed since the party.
Back at the villa, I found my father’s old emails in a folder I had kept for tax records. I had saved every request for money because I needed to account for the transfers.
The SUV purchase was a gift to Olivia. I had never expected repayment, and I would not pretend otherwise now. Several smaller payments were also gifts.
The fifty thousand was different. Dad had called it a loan and had promised in writing to repay me when the lender released its hold on the house.
There had been no hold.
Michael said those records mattered. I sent him the emails and bank confirmation.
That evening, Susan called.
“I hear you’ve been to the notary,” she said.
“I have.”
“She made a mistake if she thinks I was there as you.”
“Then tell the investigator what happened.”
“I’m speaking to you. You’re my daughter.”
“You watched Dad throw me out of my house.”
“He was angry.”
“You stood beside him.”
Susan breathed into the phone.
“I did what I thought would keep the family together.”
“By signing my name?”
She said nothing.
I looked at the scratch on my grandmother’s chest.
“You can tell me the truth now,” I said.
“Your father needed time.”
“For what?”
“He made promises to people. The villa was supposed to settle them.”
“What people?”
“I can’t do this over the phone.”
“Then speak to Michael and the investigators.”
She hung up.
I spent the next hour fighting the urge to drive to my parents’ house. I had been trained to stay calm under pressure. That training did nothing to stop me from feeling like the daughter who had once waited for Dad to come home and tell me everything was all right.
At ten, Olivia called again.
“Dad came to the hotel,” she said. “He asked David to sign something saying you gave us permission to move in.”
“Did he sign?”
“No. David read it first.”
“What did Dad do?”
“He got angry and left.”
I heard voices behind her. David was telling the children it was bedtime.
“Olivia, keep the paper if Dad left it.”
“I did.”
The next morning, she sent a photograph. The statement claimed I had offered my family the villa in exchange for repayment of an old debt.
May you like
I read it twice.
Dad was no longer merely claiming he had permission. He was trying to turn the money he owed me into a reason I owed him my home.
