Chapter 1 - THE KEYS AVIA THOUGHT SHE OWNED
Avia took Talia’s car keys while Talia was holding their feverish two-year-old.
She didn’t ask.
She reached across the kitchen counter, closed her manicured fingers around the keys, and slipped them behind her back.
“You’re not taking her anywhere without asking me.”
Talia stared at her.
Wren burned against her chest, limp and miserable in pale pink pajamas.
“Her temperature is 103.7.”
“It was lower twenty minutes ago.”
“I’m taking her to urgent care.”
Avia’s expression remained calm.
“You panic every time that child coughs.”
Talia stepped forward.
“Give me my keys.”
Beck entered from the hallway.
“What’s going on?”
Avia barely turned.
“Talia is being irrational again.”
Then Beck saw his daughter.
Saw Talia’s face.
Saw the keys in his mother’s hand.
He crossed the kitchen, took them from Avia, and placed himself between the two women.
“She’s my wife, not your employee.”
Avia laughed.
It was short and contemptuous.
Then she lifted the leather household-finance folder she carried almost everywhere and shoved it against Beck’s chest.
“Then ask her what she signed.”
Talia went still.
Beck noticed.
He opened the folder.
A loan agreement sat on top.
$286,000.
His full legal name appeared as one of the borrowers.
Beside it was Talia Mercer.
At the bottom of the visible page was Talia’s unmistakable handwritten signature.
Beck looked at her.
“Talia… you signed this?”
Talia looked first at Avia.
That was the part Beck would remember later.
Not the signature.
Not the amount.
The fear in his wife’s eyes when she looked at his mother before answering him.
“Yes… but—”
Avia reached for the folder.
Beck pulled it away.
“No.”
His mother’s face tightened.
“Beck.”
“What is this?”
“Something your wife should have told you about.”
Talia shifted Wren higher against her shoulder.
“She wouldn’t let me.”
Avia’s expression changed.
Beck looked between them.
“Wouldn’t let you what?”
Wren whimpered.
That ended the conversation for the moment.
Beck grabbed his coat.
“We’re taking her in.”
Avia stepped toward him.
“We need to deal with this first.”
Beck looked at his mother as though seeing her from farther away than the width of the kitchen.
“My daughter has a fever.”
“Talia is overreacting.”
“No.”
He picked up the finance folder.
“You’re done deciding what matters first.”
At urgent care, Wren was diagnosed with a viral infection and mild dehydration.
Nothing catastrophic.
Fluids, fever medication, close monitoring.
Beck should have felt relief.
Instead, he sat beside Talia in the dim examination room with the leather folder across his knees.
Wren finally slept against Talia’s chest.
Beck opened the agreement again.
The date was seventeen months earlier.
Three weeks after Wren had come home from the NICU.
Beck looked at his wife.
“Talia.”
She closed her eyes.
“I thought you knew.”
May you like
He felt the floor of his marriage shift beneath him.
“I have never seen this document in my life.”
Related Stories
