Chapter 7: What She Said About Mom
Ruth answered on the second ring.
I read her the message out loud, standing in the kitchen with Noah sitting at the table behind me.
There was a short silence on her end.
"Don't respond," she said.
"Don't call her back.
Don't text her.
Screenshot it and send it to me right now."
"What does she mean?" I asked.
"What could she possibly have on our mother?"
"Probably nothing," Ruth said.
"This is a pressure tactic.
When people realize the legal ground is shifting under them, they look for leverage.
She's testing whether she can frighten you into pulling back."
"She said things that would change how we see her."
"Lily." Ruth's voice was steady.
"Your mother set up a protected education fund for her children and structured it carefully enough that a family attorney noticed it and spent years trying to honor it.
That's who your mother was.
Whatever Carla claims to have, it does not change that."
I exhaled slowly.
"Okay."
"Send me the screenshot.
And if she contacts you again before Thursday, forward it directly to me."
I sent it.
We hung up.
Noah was looking at me from the table.
"What did Ruth say?"
"She said it's a scare tactic."
"Do you believe that?"
I sat down across from him.
"I think Carla is someone who has always known which buttons to press.
She knew exactly how to talk to Dad.
She knew how to make herself seem indispensable.
And now she knows that the one thing that could make us hesitate is Mom."
Noah was quiet for a moment.
"Is there anything about Mom we don't know?"
"I don't know," I said honestly.
"But I know that whatever it is, it doesn't change what Carla did.
The fund existed.
The money is gone.
That's real."
He nodded slowly.
Two days later, Carla called again.
I didn't answer.
She left a voicemail.
I listened to it once, then forwarded it to Ruth without replaying it.
Ruth called back within the hour.
"She's claiming your mother borrowed money from her before your father's marriage," Ruth said.
"Fifteen thousand dollars.
She says the liquidation of the fund was her recovering what she was owed."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"That's not true."
"I know," Ruth said.
"And even if it were, it wouldn't be a legal basis for what she did.
You cannot unilaterally seize a protected children's education fund as personal debt repayment.
That's not how any of this works." A pause.
"But I want you prepared, because she may repeat this claim in a legal setting.
Her attorney may try to use it."
"Can they?"
"They can try," Ruth said.
"We'll be ready."
Thursday came.
The DA's office was on the fourth floor of a building downtown that smelled like industrial carpet and recycled air.
Daniel Cho was younger than I'd expected — maybe early thirties, with a careful manner and a yellow legal pad he kept notes on by hand.
He interviewed Noah and me separately.
Mine took forty minutes.
He asked about the fund, about Carla's behavior after Dad passed, about specific purchases I'd noticed, about the designer bag with the price tag still on it.
I told him about the price tag.
He wrote it down.
When I came out, Noah was already in the waiting area.
He looked tired.
"How was it?" I asked.
"He asked me about the sewing class," Noah said.
"Why I stopped.
Why I started again."
I sat down beside him.
"What did you say?"
"I said I stopped because I was embarrassed." He looked at his hands.
"And I started again because of Lily."
I didn't say anything.
"He asked if I knew the dress would end up meaning something," Noah added.
"I said I just wanted you to have something nice to wear." He paused.
"He wrote that down too."
We took the bus home.
That evening, Ruth called with news.
May you like
"Carla's attorney contacted the DA's office today," she said.
"They're proposing a plea arrangement."
