Chapter 14 - The Second Forgery
I drove to my parents’ house with Rachel on speakerphone and my nerves pulled tight.
“Do not go inside if anyone is hostile,” she warned.
“I know.”
“You always say that right before doing something difficult.”
“That is not true.”
“It is extremely true.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Dad met me on the front porch.
Mom was inside with Brielle.
“What did she admit?” I asked.
He looked ashamed.
“Your wedding gift.”
“The twenty-five thousand?”
He nodded.
“I transferred it to her after she chose the photographer and florist.”
“Yes.”
“She spent it before those contracts were signed.”
“On what?”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Credit cards. A cosmetic procedure. Part of the dress.”
I stared at him.
“That was not what she told me.”
“I know.”
“So how did she pay the florist?”
“She used Mom’s card.”
I felt a new kind of exhaustion.
Not shock anymore.
Just the heavy realization that every time we reached the bottom, Brielle had dug another floor.
Dad continued.
“And there’s something else. She opened a line of credit using Mom’s information.”
I stopped breathing for a second.
“What?”
“She says Mom agreed.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
The front door opened.
My mother stood there.
Her eyes were swollen.
“Delaney.”
For the first time since the wedding, she looked at me without anger.
Behind her, Brielle sat on the couch in sweatpants, hair pulled back, face bare.
She looked small.
I reminded myself that looking small did not make a person harmless.
Mom stepped aside.
“I need to show you something.”
On the dining table were bank statements.
A credit line for forty thousand dollars.
Electronic authorization.
Mom’s name.
A signature.
Not Mom’s.
Brielle spoke from the living room.
“I was going to pay it back.”
Mom turned on her.
“With what?”
Brielle flinched.
“I had brand deals coming.”
“You had conversations,” Owen said from the hallway.
Everyone turned.
I had not heard him enter.
Brielle’s face collapsed.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your dad called me.”
Dad nodded once.
Owen held up his phone.
“I spoke to the companies you said were sponsoring the wedding.”
Brielle went still.
He looked at her.
“None of them signed anything.”
She whispered, “They were going to.”
“No,” he said. “They weren’t.”
May you like
Then he placed something on the table.
Her engagement ring.
