Chapter 3
Aunt Renee arrived before Claire explained anything.
She walked in carrying her work bag and took one look at me.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
I had managed not to cry in the driveway. I cried when she hugged me.
Renee smelled like the coffee she always drank too late in the day. She held me until I could breathe again. Then she pulled out a chair and asked Dad to start at the beginning.
He told her what the account company and bank had said. He showed her the transaction references.
Claire sat at the far end of the table.
“The fifty-one thousand is in escrow,” Renee said after reading Dad’s notes. “Do you have the purchase agreement?”
Claire said nothing.
“Who is buying the house?”
“I am.”
Dad gripped the back of his chair. “Where?”
“On Alder Lane.”
“That’s twenty minutes from here.”
“Yes.”
“Were you leaving me?”
Claire folded her arms. “I wanted somewhere I could go if I needed to.”
Brooke, standing in the doorway, went still.
“Was I going with you?”
Claire turned toward her. “Of course.”
“You never asked me.”
“I was making sure we had a choice.”
Dad sat down slowly.
I looked at Claire and tried to match her words with yesterday’s dinner. She had laughed when Dad offered Brooke the last bread roll. She had asked me whether I was excited about my college visit.
All the while, she had been arranging a house.
Renee opened her notebook. “We need the escrow contact and the agreement. We also need to know how you accessed the college account.”
Claire gave a humorless laugh.
“You’re already treating me like a criminal.”
“I’m asking how ninety-two thousand dollars moved.”
Dad looked at Claire. “You used my login.”
“You gave me the password years ago.”
“I did. I did not give you permission to take Maya’s money.”
Claire turned to Renee. “There. He admits I had access.”
Renee kept her voice even. “Access and permission are different things. Tonight we need records, and we need to stop a closing that uses disputed funds.”
“You can’t simply cancel my house.”
“I can contact the escrow company and tell them the deposit is disputed,” Dad said. “What happens next will depend on the agreement and the bank’s review.”
I had never heard him sound so careful. He was frightened too.
Claire looked at Brooke. “Do you want to stay here while they do this to me?”
Brooke’s eyes filled.
“I want you to give the money back.”
Claire got up from the table.
“I’m going to my mother’s.”
She walked upstairs. A few minutes later, we heard drawers opening.
Brooke stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching. Dad asked if she wanted to go with her mother.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You can stay here tonight,” he told her. “You have time to think.”
Claire came down with an overnight bag. She stopped beside Brooke, waiting.
Brooke stayed where she was.
Claire’s face hardened.
“Call me when you remember I’m your mother.”
The front door closed behind her.
I heard her car start, then fade down the street.
For several minutes, nobody spoke. Dad finally went upstairs to find the old account paperwork. Renee called the escrow company’s emergency number and left a message. Then she helped Dad send written notice of the dispute.
Brooke sat beside me.
“I’m sorry she said that to you,” I told her.
She shook her head. “She’s said worse to you.”
I thought of the comments Claire made when Dad was out. Little things, easy to dismiss on their own. A joke about how expensive my school trips were. A sigh when a college brochure arrived. Once, while we were washing dishes, she had said, “Brooke will still need us after you leave.”
I had told myself she was worried about Brooke growing up.
Now I wondered how long she had been planning to take the money.
Dad returned with a folder.
He laid out statements going back years. I recognized my mother’s name on the earliest deposits. I had been six when she died. Most of what I remembered about her was ordinary: the sound of her singing while she untangled my hair, the way she warmed my gloves on a radiator.
Renee touched one of the pages.
“Leah put her first bonus into this,” she said.
Dad nodded. “She said Maya would have choices.”
I looked at the balance she had started.
It was much smaller than ninety-two thousand dollars. I loved her fiercely for every dollar of it.
Dad’s phone rang. He put it on speaker. An employee from the escrow company had returned Renee’s call.
She could not discuss Claire’s purchase with us, but she took the transfer reference, the disputed account information, and Renee’s contact details. She said their team would review the funds before releasing anything for closing.
After the call, Renee looked at Dad.
“That may buy us time. Tomorrow we make the formal reports.”
Brooke’s phone lit up. She read the message and looked at me.
“Mom says you’re trying to have her arrested.”
“I haven’t spoken to her.”
“I know.”
Another message appeared.
Brooke turned the screen toward us.
If Maya makes this public, tell her what happened to her mother’s necklace.
I stared at the words.
May you like
My mother’s necklace had been missing for eight years.
I had never told Claire how often I still looked for it.
