“You liar.”
“Mom, I have the bank records.”
She crossed the distance between us and spat directly toward my face.
Nobody moved.
“You are a leech,” she shouted. “My money is not for you.”
Then she pointed toward Lily, who had started crying beside Ethan.
“Take that burden and get out.”
Ethan was standing before I could respond. He reached for my hand.
“Let’s go.”
I wiped my face with a napkin, grabbed Lily’s coat, and walked outside while Lauren watched me with a strange, satisfied expression. Dad followed us onto the porch but said only, “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t respond.
We drove forty minutes home without speaking. Once Lily was asleep, Ethan locked the front door and asked, “Do you think your mom knows?”
“Knows what?”
He looked toward the hallway leading to the office, where a folder containing closing documents rested inside a locked drawer.
Three weeks earlier, Ethan and I had quietly closed on a house.
Not our current townhouse.
A second house.
A renovated four-bedroom property outside Columbus that we had purchased partly using money from an investment account my grandmother left directly to me years earlier. We planned to move in after New Year’s and rent out the townhouse. I hadn’t told my mother because every financial detail within our family became a competition.
The following morning, my phone rang at 7:12.
Dad.
I nearly ignored it.
When I answered, he sounded breathless.
“Emily,” he said, “your mother just discovered the house.”
My stomach tightened. “How?”
“Lauren found the county property transfer online. She showed her.”
I shut my eyes.
Dad lowered his voice.
“Your mother believes you stole the money from us.”
Then I heard Diane shouting somewhere in the background.
And Dad whispered, “She’s coming to your house.”
