Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN WITH THE PACKED SUV
Teresa recovered quickly.
“She’s trying to turn you against me,” she told Grant.
“You said the loan was for payroll.”
“It is.”
“Then why are your suitcases in the car?”
Her eyes moved toward the front window.
Grant followed her gaze.
Three large suitcases stood behind the SUV’s tinted rear glass. A cardboard box sat on the passenger seat with TULSA written across the side in black marker.
Teresa had a sister in Oklahoma.
Grant knew that. So did I.
What he did not know was that Teresa had spent the previous month forwarding her personal mail there.
I had seen the postal confirmation on our kitchen counter and assumed she was helping her sister move.
Teresa reached for the loan packet.
“We don’t have time for this.”
Grant pulled the pages away.
“What’s in Tulsa?”
“A temporary place to stay if the company closes.”
“You never told me you were leaving.”
“You never asked what I would do after you drove your father’s business into the ground.”
The words hit him harder than anything I had said.
Grant’s father had treated the company like a third child. Grant had spent his entire adult life trying to prove he deserved it.
Teresa knew where to place the knife.
She turned to me.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To make him doubt everyone who has ever stood by him?”
I gripped the edge of the table to keep myself upright.
“No. I want my baby to live.”
Grant looked at my swollen legs.
For the first time since the trench, shame moved across his face.
Then Teresa said quietly, “If the lender reports that call, the bank will freeze every account connected to the application.”
Grant’s shame disappeared beneath panic.
He lifted me from the chair.
“I have to put her somewhere until we know what happened.”
“Grant,” I said, “your mother isn’t saving the company.”
He carried me toward the back door.
“She’s selling it.”
May you like
His steps slowed.
Teresa’s silence confirmed what my words could not.
