Chapter 4 - Grandma Ruth
“Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
That was the first thing Grandma Ruth said.
Not “Where are you?”
Not “What did you do?”
Not “Vanessa is upset.”
Happy birthday.
Two words.
I pressed my lips together.
“Thank you, Grandma.”
“I knew you’d go somewhere one day.”
I leaned back in the terrace chair.
“What does that mean?”
She chuckled softly.
“It means there’s only so many years a person can sit at a table where everybody else gets the biggest slice.”
I swallowed.
Grandma had never been cruel to my parents, but she had never been fooled by them either.
When I was little, she was the one who mailed me birthday cards separately from Christmas cards.
Different envelopes.
Different stamps.
She used to write, A birthday is not a holiday inconvenience.
At thirteen, I thought it was just a cute thing grandmothers said.
At twenty-seven, it felt like a warning she had been sending me for fourteen years.
“Did Mom call you?” I asked.
“Immediately.”
“Of course.”
“She says you’re punishing the family.”
“I took a vacation.”
“I know.”
“She says the post was passive-aggressive.”
“Your mother thinks any boundary she didn’t approve is aggression.”
I laughed into my hand.
Grandma lowered her voice.
“But that isn’t why I called.”
The laugh disappeared.
“What happened?”
“Do you remember your grandfather’s investment account?”
“Kind of.”
My grandfather had died four years earlier. He had owned three small apartment buildings outside Chicago and invested carefully for decades. Not billionaire money. But enough that the family talked about it in vague, respectful tones.
Grandma continued.
“When he died, most things went to me. But there was one account he created for you and Vanessa.”
I sat straighter.
“What account?”
“A trust.”
I frowned.
“Nobody ever told me about a trust.”
“I know.”
The wind moved a strand of hair across my cheek.
“Grandma?”
“The first distribution date was supposed to be your twenty-seventh birthday.”
My stomach dropped.
Today.
“What kind of distribution?”
“Enough that your parents should have told you years ago.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped across the tile.
“How much?”
Grandma went quiet.
Then she said, “Your share is currently worth a little over six hundred thousand dollars.”
For several seconds, Tokyo disappeared.
I heard only the wind.
The pool filter.
My own breath.
“Six hundred... what?”
“Thousand.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“Why didn’t I know?”
“That’s what I need you to ask your father.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
Her voice hardened.
“Because three years ago, he asked me to sign a document delaying your access until age thirty.”
My skin went cold.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at my phone.
Six missed calls from Dad.
May you like
And suddenly, the birthday drama felt much smaller than the question sitting underneath it.
Why had my father tried to delay money that belonged to me?
