Chapter 3 - MY FATHER KNEW ABOUT THE RENT
“Dad.”
He kept looking toward the backyard.
“Did you know?”
“Some.”
“How much is some?”
Mom looked at him.
“Warren?”
He sat down.
Three months earlier, Trisha had called him because she was short on rent after her ex-husband fell behind on child support.
She asked whether using the tuition account temporarily would be okay.
Dad told her she needed to ask me.
She said she already had.
“She hadn’t,” I said.
“I know that now.”
“How?”
“Because I asked her last month if she’d paid you back.”
My anger sharpened.
“And?”
“She said you told her not to worry until graduation.”
Mom sat down beside him.
“You never told me.”
Dad gave her a tired look.
“Because every conversation about Trisha becomes everybody trying to keep her from falling apart.”
That sentence was more honest than anything he had said all afternoon.
I scrolled.
Rent.
Utilities.
A grocery delivery.
Two payments to a youth soccer club.
A $480 charge from a department store before Christmas.
Not all tuition.
Not even mostly tuition during certain months.
“How much has she spent?”
I opened the export function.
Neil came downstairs while I was calculating.
Hannah had finally stopped crying.
“She’s watching a movie.”
He looked at my parents.
“What happened?”
I told him.
His jaw tightened.
Then he did something I did not expect.
He sat beside me and said, “There’s something else.”
I knew immediately I was going to hate it.
“What?”
“Trisha asked me for nine hundred dollars last month.”
My parents went quiet.
“Did you give it to her?”
“Yes.”
I stood.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“She said Caleb needed dental work and Scott hadn’t paid his half.”
“Did Caleb need dental work?”
Neil rubbed his forehead.
“I don’t know.”
I laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
My husband had given my sister money secretly because she knew exactly which emotional button to press.
Children.
Emergency.
Don’t upset Andrea.
The same pattern.
“What did she say about telling me?”
“That you were stressed.”
I looked at him.
“And that worked?”
He didn’t defend himself.
“No.”
That mattered.
Not enough yet.
But it mattered.
By 9:00 p.m., I had downloaded eighteen months of account transactions.
The number I could not explain was $18,740.
Not tuition.
Not identifiable school charges.
Money spent or transferred elsewhere.
And that did not include the tuition payments I had made directly.
The first serious consequence was no longer only Hannah losing her savings.
I had no idea what I had actually funded.
I texted Trisha.
Tomorrow morning I need your current enrollment statement, tuition ledger, and receipts for every non-school charge from the education account.
Her answer arrived almost immediately.
You’re treating me like a criminal.
I replied:
I’m treating $18,740 like $18,740.
No answer.
Then Mom said quietly:
“She is enrolled, Andrea.”
I looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“I saw her school schedule.”
“When?”
Mom hesitated.
“January.”
It was April.
I opened my laptop.
College privacy rules meant I could not simply call and demand Trisha’s academic record.
But as payer on several prior invoices, I had copies of bills Trisha had sent me.
I opened the most recent PDF.
Something about it bothered me.
The university logo looked right.
The amounts looked right.
Then I noticed the date.
The invoice had been generated on a Sunday at 11:48 p.m.
I checked the previous one.
Sunday.
Same time.
The one before that too.
Neil leaned over my shoulder.
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That was the honest answer.
May you like
But for the first time, the school paperwork looked less like proof.
And more like something Trisha wanted me to believe.
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