Chapter 15 - The Lowest Point
My apartment lease renewal arrived the same day Northline confirmed I could return to normal work.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been thrilled.
Instead, I sat on the floor of Lena's guest room surrounded by documents and realized I was afraid to open the mail.
My father had trained me to treat every good development as the beginning of another punishment.
My mother was still living in the family house.
Belle was paying for a motel she couldn't afford.
The business was in crisis.
The bank investigation remained open.
And the money I needed for rent was still caught in the dispute.
I had become dependent on friends in precisely the way my father had claimed I would be.
That thought nearly broke me.
Dana found me crying in her office after a routine call about deadlines.
She let me finish.
Then she said, “You keep calling this a failure because you needed help.”
I wiped my face.
“What else would you call it?”
“Being robbed and continuing anyway.”
That night my mother asked to see me.
We met at a community center with a counselor present.
She had finally left the house to stay with a cousin.
She said she knew about the old notary stamp because Nathaniel had asked her to retrieve it.
She had told herself he was only preparing internal family paperwork.
Then she admitted she had seen my name on the forms.
“Why didn't you stop him?”
“I thought if I argued, everything would get worse.”
“It got worse for me.”
She nodded.
For once, she did not defend herself.
“I know.”
I wanted to hug her.
I also wanted to never see her again.
Both feelings felt true.
After the meeting, a courier delivered a copy of a company resolution to Dana.
It purported to remove me from any beneficial interest in the trust on grounds that I had voluntarily surrendered my rights years earlier.
Attached was another signature page.
This one carried a date I could never forget.
May you like
The day I buried my grandmother.
