Chapter 5: Mom's Words
I slid the letter across to Jamie.
He picked it up with both hands.
He read slowly, the way he always did when something mattered — his lips barely moving, his eyes going over each line twice.
I watched his face.
He got to the part about the money.
His jaw tightened.
He kept reading.
Near the bottom of the letter, something changed in his expression.
The tightness softened into something harder to name.
He read the last few lines, then set the letter down flat on the table and pressed his hand over it.
"She says she loves us," he said.
"Yes."
"She says she's sorry she couldn't stay."
"Yes."
He nodded slowly, like he was filing something away somewhere deep.
Then he looked at our father.
"She also says," Jamie said, "that she hoped you'd find your way back to us someday.
That she believed you would."
Dad made a sound that wasn't quite a word.
"She had more faith in you than you deserved," Jamie said.
Not cruelly.
Just as a fact.
"I know," Dad said.
His voice was barely there.
"The money she left us," I said, keeping my voice level.
"I want to understand exactly what happened to it.
All of it."
Dad sat back down.
Nobody told him to.
Nobody stopped him either.
"After your mother passed," he said, "I found the account information in her things.
There was a letter for me too — separate from yours.
She explained what it was for.
She made me promise." He stopped.
"I kept the promise for about two years."
"And then Claire found out," I said.
"She found the paperwork.
She asked me what it was.
I told her." He rubbed the back of his neck.
"She said it was sitting there doing nothing.
She said you'd both be fine.
She said we needed it to get the business started — she had this idea, a boutique, she'd been talking about it for months.
She said it would be an investment.
That we'd pay it back."
"Did you?" Jamie said.
Dad didn't answer.
"Did you ever pay a single dollar back into that account?" Jamie said.
"No."
"The boutique," I said.
"Did it work?"
"For a few years.
Then it didn't." He spread his hands on the table.
"Claire ran it into the ground.
Bad stock, bad location, she kept spending on things that didn't matter.
By the time it closed, the money was gone.
All of it."
"And the house?" I said.
"The car?"
"Those were in her name.
She insisted on it from the beginning.
I thought it was just how she did things.
I didn't understand until later that she was protecting herself.
Making sure that if anything went wrong, she walked away with everything and I walked away with nothing."
Jamie leaned forward.
"So she used you the same way you used us."
Dad looked at him.
"She saw someone she could take from," Jamie said, "and she took.
And you let her.
Just like you let her take us."
The words landed without drama.
No raised voice.
Just the plain shape of the truth, sitting on the table next to our mother's letter.
Dad put his head down.
His shoulders shook once.
I watched him.
I felt something move in my chest — not sympathy exactly, and not satisfaction either.
Something more complicated.
Something I didn't have a word for yet.
Jamie picked up the photograph of our mother.
He looked at it for a long time.
At her smile, at the baby in the blue hat, at the hospital room behind her.
"Is this me?" he said quietly.
"I think so," I said.
He turned the photo over and read the words on the back.
*For my children, when they are ready.*
He set it down gently, face up, so she was looking at the ceiling.
"What do you want to do?" he asked me.
"I don't know yet," I said honestly.
"But I want what she left us.
I want it back."
Jamie nodded.
I looked at our father.
"Is Claire reachable?" I said.
"Does she know where the money went, all the records, the account details?"
"I have some of it," Dad said.
"Not all."
"Then we start with what you have." I stood up.
"And Dad — if you want to stay in this house, if you want food and a roof like I offered, you're going to help me get back every dollar that belonged to Jamie and me.
Every single one."
He looked up at me.
Something in his face that might have been relief, or might have been fear, or might have been both at once.
"Okay," he said.
"That's not a yes," I said.
"That's a starting point.
There's a difference."
Jamie looked at me across the table.
The corner of his mouth moved — not quite a smile, but close.
Then his phone buzzed.
He glanced at the screen and frowned.
"It's an unknown number," he said.
"Local area code."
He answered it anyway, and I watched his face go from cautious to confused to something I hadn't seen on him in a long time.
Alarm.
"Who is this?" he said into the phone.
Then: "How did you get this number?"
May you like
He looked at me.
"It's Claire," he said.
