Chapter 10 - MY MOTHER’S VERSION
My mother called eighteen times.
I ignored the first seventeen.
On the eighteenth, I answered.
“Evelyn.”
Her voice sounded exhausted.
“Where are you?”
“That’s not important.”
“We need to talk.”
“You had years.”
“This situation has gotten completely out of control.”
I looked through the conference-room windows at the city below.
“No.”
I said it calmly.
“Preston got out of control.”
“Your brother made a terrible mistake.”
“Which one?”
Silence.
“Planting the phone?”
I continued.
“Using Rebecca?”
Silence.
“Stealing company money?”
Her breathing changed.
“Or attacking Sophie?”
“Stop saying it like that.”
I almost laughed.
“Like what?”
“As if he intended to hurt her.”
“He raised a wooden board.”
“He was angry.”
“So was I.”
My voice dropped.
“I didn’t attack anyone.”
My mother began crying.
Twelve hours earlier, those tears would have destroyed me.
Now I heard them differently.
They weren’t grief.
They were strategy.
“Your father could lose everything.”
“He participated.”
“He was trying to protect the company.”
“From an audit?”
“From scandal.”
“The scandal is stealing millions.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Police have records.”
Another pause.
Then my mother said something revealing.
“Rebecca was never supposed to keep those.”
There it was.
I closed my eyes.
“You knew.”
“Evelyn.”
“You knew about the transfers.”
“No.”
“You just admitted you knew about the records.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I stood.
“How long?”
She said nothing.
“How long have you known?”
“Your father told me last year there were accounting irregularities.”
“Accounting irregularities.”
“Don’t mock me.”
“I’m trying not to scream.”
She began talking faster.
“Preston said it was temporary.”
“Millions of dollars?”
“He said the money would be returned after the expansion project.”
“What expansion?”
Silence again.
There was no expansion.
At least none I knew about.
“What did he spend it on?”
“I don’t know.”
That part sounded true.
I sat down.
“Why frame me?”
“It wasn’t supposed to go that far.”
“You framed Sophie.”
“The bracelet was supposed to create leverage.”
The words were so cold I nearly dropped the phone.
“Leverage.”
“We needed you to sign.”
“You needed?”
My mother realized her mistake.
Too late.
“So you admit it.”
“I was protecting this family.”
“No.”
I looked at my grandmother’s letter.
“You were protecting Preston.”
“They are the same thing.”
That sentence explained my entire childhood.
Preston had become the family.
Everyone else existed to absorb the consequences.
“Not anymore.”
My mother’s voice sharpened.
“What are you going to do?”
“For the first time?”
I picked up the trust documents.
“My job.”
Then I ended the call.
Arthur watched me quietly.
“That sounded difficult.”
“It was.”
“Do you regret it?”
I thought about Sophie asking why her grandmother believed Preston.
May you like
“No.”
And for the first time, I meant it.
