Chapter 5 - THE LIE WAS NEVER JUST ABOUT MONEY
Laura would not explain more that night.
But she did one thing that mattered.
She handed Rachel a grocery-store envelope filled with old papers.
“I started keeping these last spring.”
Inside were copies of bank notices, business invoices, and three letters from creditors addressed to Derek.
Rachel looked up.
“Why do you have these?”
“Because he kept saying business was fine.”
Derek owned a small residential remodeling company.
For years he had been busy enough to complain about being overworked.
Over the past eighteen months, however, several projects had been delayed. A contractor had sued over unpaid materials. Derek blamed inflation, unreliable clients, and everyone except himself.
Laura sat at the kitchen island.
“I found a past-due notice. Then another.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“Does Mom?”
“No.”
Rachel thought about Helen’s thousand dollars each month.
Laura seemed to read her face.
“You think he took it.”
“I think we should stop guessing.”
Laura looked miserable.
“He said Mom wanted to help Mason.”
“With what?”
“Hockey. School stuff. Whatever.”
“Mason doesn’t play hockey anymore.”
“I know.”
Rachel leaned against the counter.
“Laura, when did he start telling Mom I owed Dad seventy-two thousand?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did his business start having cash problems?”
Laura said nothing.
The dates were close enough to make the silence answer for her.
Rachel drove back to Helen’s house the next morning.
This time Helen allowed her inside.
Rachel placed her father’s email on the table.
Helen read it.
Then read it again.
Her face hardened.
“This proves eighteen thousand.”
“It proves Dad called it a gift.”
“Derek said there were other expenses.”
“What other expenses?”
“I don’t know.”
“Exactly.”
Helen pushed the paper away.
“You always disliked him.”
“No. I disliked being talked down to by him. That’s different.”
“He helped after your father died.”
“And I let that become an excuse not to ask questions.”
Helen looked toward the kitchen window.
For the first time, Rachel saw uncertainty instead of defensiveness.
Then Helen said, “I gave him more than the thousand some months.”
Rachel went still.
“How much more?”
Helen opened a drawer and removed a small spiral notebook.
“I wrote it down.”
Rachel flipped through the pages.
$1,000.
$1,000.
$1,500.
$2,200.
$1,000.
Beside several entries Helen had written one word.
House.
Beside others:
Mason.
Business.
Rachel looked at the total she calculated in the margin.
Nearly fifty-one thousand dollars.
Her mother whispered, “He told me you were paying back what you owed, so I thought I could afford to help them too.”
Rachel closed the notebook.
May you like
Derek had not merely lied about her.
He had used the lie to make Helen feel richer than she was.
