Chapter 3
Dad called the bank back while I sat beside him at the kitchen table.
I couldn’t hear what the woman on the phone said. I watched his face instead. Each time he asked another question, it grew more serious.
“No,” he said finally. “I didn’t authorize a withdrawal. Please put a hold on any request until I come in.”
He ended the call and rubbed his forehead.
“Mom had an account for me?”
“Yes. She opened it when you were born. Money she saved for your education is in it.”
“Vanessa knows about it?”
“She’s seen the account on our household records. She isn’t allowed to take money from it.”
“What did she ask the bank to do?”
“To transfer it to an account in her name.”
I stared at him. “All of it?”
“She requested all of it.”
The front door opened.
Vanessa walked in carrying her handbag and a pharmacy bag. She stopped when she saw us.
“I needed a minute,” she said.
Dad stood. “The bank called.”
Her fingers tightened around the pharmacy bag.
“I was handling paperwork. You’ve had no time for it.”
“You requested Nia’s money.”
“It would have stayed in the family.”
“It belongs to her.”
Vanessa looked at me. “Did you tell him to check our accounts?”
“I didn’t know about the account until he told me.”
Dad moved between us. “Talk to me.”
She set her bags on the counter. “Fine. My mother needs help. I was going to move the money temporarily and replace it.”
“How much does she need?”
Vanessa looked away.
Dad asked again.
“I haven’t worked it out.”
He told her to leave the account alone. Then he asked for my box.
“I donated it,” she said.
“Where?”
“I’ll call and find out.”
She walked upstairs before he could ask anything else.
That evening, Dad brought a chair into the hallway outside my room. He said he wanted me to sleep without worrying about anyone coming in. I asked if he thought Vanessa would.
“I don’t know what she’ll do,” he said. “I’ll be here.”
I lay awake anyway.
Around midnight, I heard voices downstairs. Vanessa was speaking on the phone, too softly for me to make out the words. Then a drawer opened and shut.
Dad went down. Their voices rose. A door closed hard.
In the morning, Vanessa was gone. So was one of her suitcases.
Leo and Maya sat at the breakfast table in silence. Maya pushed cereal around her bowl.
“Is Mom coming back?” she asked Dad.
“I’m trying to talk to her.”
“She sounded mad at Nia.”
“She can be angry with me,” Dad said. “Nia did nothing wrong.”
Leo looked relieved for half a second. Then he looked frightened again.
After Dad took them to school, he and I went to the bank. He had called my school and said I would be late. I stayed close to him in the lobby, staring at the clean white soles of my new shoes.
A woman named Ms. Chen met us in a small office. She showed Dad the request Vanessa had submitted. I recognized Vanessa’s looping signature on one page.
On another page was Dad’s name.
He leaned forward.
“That isn’t my signature.”
Ms. Chen nodded. She had noticed differences too. That was why she had called him before approving anything.
She could not tell us where the missing box was. But the account request gave Dad a reason to ask more questions. He asked for copies of the records and made another call while we waited in his car.
When he got off the phone, he looked at me.
“I’m speaking with a lawyer this afternoon.”
“Does that mean Vanessa’s going to jail?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought about Leo and Maya. “They need her.”
“They do,” Dad said. “I’ll make sure they’re cared for. I also have to find out what happened.”
At school, I couldn’t focus. In English class, my teacher asked me to read aloud, and I realized I had been staring at the same line for five minutes.
Leo found me at lunch. We went to different schools, but his elementary building was across the shared courtyard. He had a folded piece of paper in his hand.
“I remembered something,” he said.
He had drawn a blue box with yellow flowers on its lid. Beside it, he had drawn the sign on a storefront.
“I saw Mom take it into this place,” he told me. “Not on Thursday. On Saturday, when Maya and I went with her to get groceries.”
The sign in his drawing said BELL & SONS.
“What kind of store?”
“One with old clocks in the window. She made us wait in the car.”
I took a picture of the drawing and sent it to Dad.
He called within a minute. “Did Leo see her come back out with the box?”
I asked Leo. He shook his head.
Dad told me to stay at school. He was going to find the store.
For the rest of the afternoon, my stomach hurt. At dismissal, Dad was waiting beside his car. I ran toward him.
“Did they have it?”
He opened the passenger door, then paused.
“They had the bracelet,” he said.
Relief hit so fast I almost cried.
“Where are the letters?”
“He didn’t know about them.”
I gripped the door handle.
Dad held up a small paper envelope. Through its open edge, I saw a flash of silver and blue.
“The man said Vanessa sold him the bracelet on Saturday,” Dad said. “He also gave me a receipt. There was a second item on it.”
“What item?”
May you like
Dad swallowed.
“Your mother’s wedding ring.”
