Chapter 6: Nicole Breaks First
The police took forty minutes to arrive.
Mason stood near the entrance of the storage unit.
Emma sat on a folding chair Lily had found inside, Scout's head resting across her knees.
Lily continued going through the filing boxes, quietly, methodically, setting documents into two piles — one for the police, one for the attorney she'd already looked up on her phone.
Brent sat against the far wall and said nothing.
Nicole did not sit down.
She stood near the roll-up door, arms crossed, watching the entrance of the facility.
After twenty minutes, she spoke.
"I didn't know about the kennel."
No one responded.
"That was Brent's idea.
I told him it was too far.
I told him—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I want that on record.
I told him it was too far."
Emma looked up from Scout.
"You were standing outside it with a cane in reach."
"I didn't use it."
"Lily has marks on her arms."
Nicole's mouth pressed into a line.
"You knew about the money," Emma said.
It wasn't an accusation.
It was a statement of fact, spoken the way you'd read a number off a page.
"You knew about the forged signature.
You knew about the storage unit.
You've been in this house every week for eleven months and you said nothing." She paused.
"So don't tell me what you didn't know."
Nicole looked at Brent.
Brent was staring at the floor.
"He said it was temporary," Nicole said finally.
Her voice had changed — smaller now, the performance gone out of it.
"He said we'd pay it back before Mason came home.
He said Emma would never even know."
"Pay it back from what?" Lily said, without looking up from the documents.
Nicole didn't answer.
"There's a second mortgage here," Lily said.
She held up a document.
"On Brent and Nicole's house.
Taken out eighteen months ago.
For two hundred thousand." She set it in the police pile.
"And a loan default notice.
Four months ago."
The air in the storage unit changed.
Emma looked at Brent.
"You lost it."
Brent said nothing.
"You took my inheritance and you lost it."
"It was an investment—"
"Four hundred and thirty thousand dollars." Emma's voice stayed level.
"My aunt's money.
The money she saved her entire life.
And you lost it."
"The market—"
"Don't." Emma stood up.
Scout moved with her.
"Don't tell me about the market.
Don't tell me about investments.
You forged my name.
You stole from my family.
And when Lily found out, you locked us in a cage in our own backyard to buy yourself more time." She took one step toward him.
"Look at me, Brent."
He looked up.
"Was any of it ever going to come back?"
Brent held her gaze for two seconds.
Then his eyes dropped.
That was the answer.
Nicole made a sound — not quite a sob, not quite a word.
She put one hand over her mouth.
Two police cars pulled into the facility entrance.
Gerald walked ahead of them, pointing toward Unit 14.
Brent got to his feet slowly.
He straightened his shirt.
An old reflex — making himself presentable, even now.
"I'll tell them it was a misunderstanding," he said quietly.
"A family dispute over finances.
That's all this is.
No judge is going to—"
"Lily," Mason said.
Lily held up her phone.
She'd been recording since the police cars turned in.
May you like
Brent's hands went still at his sides.
The officers reached the doorway.
