Chapter 7 - The Pattern Between the Payments
They ignored the calls for two days.
On the third, Clara came back with a spreadsheet.
Maren laughed once when she saw it.
“You color-coded Mom?”
“I work twelve-hour hospital shifts. Spreadsheets are how I stay sane.”
They compared every transfer for the previous eleven months.
The pattern became impossible to dismiss.
When Maren sent twelve hundred for Clara, Darlene usually forwarded five or six hundred.
When Clara sent eight hundred for Maren, Darlene sometimes forwarded two hundred as an unsolicited “gift” to Maren.
Those gifts had always come with the same message.
Don’t argue. Moms help their kids.
Maren stared at one particular month.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“In April she sent me two hundred and told me it was because she got a bonus.”
Clara looked down.
“I sent her eight hundred that week.”
Neither woman spoke.
Maren scrolled farther back.
Another two hundred-dollar gift.
Another Clara transfer days earlier.
The scheme was more sophisticated than simple theft.
Darlene had returned just enough money to each daughter to maintain the image of a mother who was still financially helping them.
She took from both directions.
Then redistributed small amounts under her own name.
“She was buying gratitude with our money,” Clara said.
Maren hated how accurate that sounded.
But another possibility bothered her.
“Or she was trying to keep us owing her.”
Clara looked at her.
The phrase Darlene had screamed during the stroller fight came back.
Start paying us back.
Not help me.
Not I need money.
Pay us back.
Maren closed the laptop.
“I don’t think this was only about the mortgage.”
“What else could it be?”
“I don’t know.”
May you like
But for the first time, Maren understood that the money itself might not have been the thing Darlene valued most.
It was being the person through whom everything moved.
