Chapter 3: What the Message Said
The message was four words.
*Is she still home?*
I read it twice.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
Then I read it a third time, because some part of me was still hoping I had misunderstood.
I hadn't.
"He's asking if someone is still home," I said.
My voice came out quieter than I expected.
"Who is he asking about, Claire?"
She reached for the phone.
I stepped back.
"Don't."
"Tom, please just let me explain—"
"Who is he asking about?"
Maya hadn't moved from the doorway.
She was seventeen years old and she was watching her mother the way you watch a stranger.
Claire looked at the floor.
"Me."
The word landed like something dropped from a height.
"He was asking if you were still home," I said.
"Because he was planning to come here."
"It isn't—"
"How long?"
She didn't answer.
"Claire.
How long has this been going on?"
"It's complicated."
I set her phone down on the counter.
Carefully.
The way you set something down when you don't trust your own hands.
"Our daughter's college fund is empty," I said.
"There is a man texting your phone asking if you're home.
And you're telling me it's complicated."
Brooke appeared at the top of the stairs.
She was still in the clothes she'd worn to receive the car — a pale yellow top, jeans, her hair still done.
She looked down at the three of us and something shifted in her face.
"What's happening?" she said.
Nobody answered her.
"Mom?
What's going on?"
Claire looked up at Brooke, and for just a moment something crossed her face that I couldn't read.
Not guilt exactly.
Something older than guilt.
"Go back to your room, sweetheart," Claire said.
"Don't," I said.
"She's eighteen.
She can stand there."
Brooke came slowly down the stairs and stopped on the last step.
She looked at me, then at her mother, then at Maya still frozen in the doorway.
"Someone tell me what is happening," she said.
Maya turned to look at her sister.
"Mom emptied my college fund."
Brooke's face went blank.
"What?"
"Ninety-two thousand dollars," Maya said.
"Gone.
She used it to buy you that car and send the rest to some man named Daniel Marsh."
Brooke looked at her mother.
"Mom, is that true?"
Claire pressed her fingers to her mouth.
"Is it true?" Brooke's voice cracked on the second word.
"I was going to fix it," Claire said.
"I was going to put it back before anyone noticed."
"Put it back," I repeated.
"With what money?"
She said nothing.
"Claire.
With what money were you going to replace ninety-two thousand dollars?"
She looked at the counter.
At the phone I had set down.
At the wall behind me.
Everywhere except my face.
"He was going to help me," she finally said.
The kitchen went very quiet.
"Daniel Marsh was going to help you replace the money you sent him," I said.
She nodded.
Just barely.
Maya made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
She pressed her hand over her mouth and walked out of the kitchen.
I heard her bedroom door close upstairs.
Not a slam.
Just a click.
That was somehow worse.
Brooke stepped off the last stair.
She walked to the counter, picked up her mother's phone, and read the message herself.
She set it back down.
"I don't want the car," she said.
"Brooke—"
"I don't want it." She looked at her mother with something I had never seen on my younger daughter's face before.
"How could you do that to her?"
Claire reached for her.
Brooke stepped back.
That was when Claire's phone buzzed again.
I looked at the screen.
May you like
Daniel Marsh had sent a second message.
*Tell him if he causes problems, I'll make sure he loses more than the money.*
