Chapter 3 - The Father Who Texted Her
I ran through the school entrance with my phone in one hand and the Aster Lane address open in the other.
Mrs. Alvarez was waiting near the security desk.
"She's with me," she said before I could ask.
My knees nearly gave out.
"Where's my mother?"
"Not here yet. Chloe is in the conference room."
We moved down the hallway fast.
At the door, Mrs. Alvarez caught my arm.
"Don't lead with the money."
"She already knows."
"She knows one sentence. She doesn't know what it means."
I nodded once.
Then I went in.
Chloe sat at the far end of a long table with her backpack in her lap.
She looked younger up close.
Not because of her face.
Because she was holding both straps like someone might take the bag away.
I stopped six feet from her.
"Hey."
She looked at my shoes instead of my face.
"Hi."
I wanted to cross the room and hold her.
I stayed where I was.
"You don't have to go anywhere with me," I said. "You don't have to believe anything I say today. I just want to show you something."
I put my phone on the table and slid it toward her.
The screen showed five years of transfers.
She didn't touch it.
"Grandma said those were fake screenshots."
The speed of the response told me Diane had already prepared her.
I swallowed.
"Okay. Then don't trust screenshots. Mrs. Alvarez saw the bank account with me. We can call the bank in front of you."
Chloe finally looked up.
Her eyes were Laura's.
That hurt more than I expected.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.
"Tell you what?"
"That you were sending it."
"I thought you knew."
"How would I know?"
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
She reached into her backpack and pulled out an old phone with a cracked corner.
"You told me not to ask you about money."
"I never told you that."
She unlocked the phone.
Her thumb moved quickly through a message thread.
Then she pushed it across the table.
The contact name was DAD.
The number underneath was the Dallas number from the school file.
Not mine.
My skin went cold.
I scrolled.
The thread went back years.
CHLOE: Grandma says the field trip costs $120. Is that okay?
DAD: Ask her. I already send enough.
CHLOE: I need new shoes for track.
DAD: You always need something.
CHLOE: Are you coming to my choir thing Friday?
DAD: I can't keep rearranging my life.
I stopped.
The words blurred.
"I didn't write these."
Chloe's mouth tightened.
"You expect me to believe somebody pretended to be you for four years?"
"I expect you to believe the number isn't mine."
"Maybe you had another phone."
"I didn't."
She grabbed it back.
"Grandma said you'd deny everything if you ever got caught."
A hard knock hit the conference room door.
Mrs. Alvarez entered and locked it behind her.
"Diane is downstairs," she said. "She's demanding to take Chloe home."
Chloe stood.
"I have to go."
"No," I said too quickly.
She flinched.
I lowered my voice.
"Sorry. I mean—please don't leave yet."
"She's my ride."
"I'm your father."
"You're never here."
The sentence landed clean.
No yelling.
No drama.
Just fact as she understood it.
I nodded because defending myself would have been easier than hearing her.
"You're right. I wasn't here enough. But I was not the person sending those messages."
I looked at Mrs. Alvarez.
"Can we verify when that number was added to the school record?"
"I already asked IT. They're pulling the audit log."
Chloe frowned.
"Why would Grandma do that?"
I didn't answer.
I didn't know how to say because she may have been stealing from both of us without turning suspicion into a weapon.
So I said, "That's what I need to find out."
My phone buzzed.
A message from Mom.
YOU ARE SCARING HER.
Another.
COME DOWNSTAIRS LIKE AN ADULT.
I turned the screen face down.
Chloe saw anyway.
"She's scared too," she said.
"Maybe."
"You don't care?"
"I care about what is true."
She stared at me.
Then she sat again.
For the next fifteen minutes we compared phones.
It was worse than I expected.
When I texted Chloe's real number over the years, I got short replies.
OK.
BUSY.
LOVE YOU TOO.
She swore she hadn't sent most of them.
Her old message history showed long gaps where my texts never appeared at all.
Diane had been standing between us in both directions.
Not every time.
Just enough.
Enough to make me think Chloe wanted space.
Enough to make Chloe think I resented her.
Mrs. Alvarez's laptop chimed.
She turned it around.
"IT found the contact change. The Dallas number was added from the parent portal four years ago."
"Whose login?"
"Yours."
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
"I never used the parent portal."
"The login was created with your email address. Password recovery went to a secondary address."
"Which address?"
She read it.
I knew that one.
It was Mom's old Yahoo account.
Chloe covered her mouth.
For the first time, she looked frightened instead of angry.
The phone in her hand vibrated.
DAD had sent a new message.
All three of us stared at the screen.
Chloe opened it.
STOP LETTING HIM CONFUSE YOU. YOUR MOTHER WOULD BE ASHAMED OF HOW YOU'RE ACTING.
I felt the room narrow.
Chloe whispered, "She says that a lot."
"Who?"
"Grandma."
I didn't move.
Laura and I had one private phrase when we argued about parenting.
Never use the dead against the living.
We had said it after Laura's father died and relatives started telling her what he "would have wanted."
Only three people had ever heard the full conversation.
Laura.
Me.
And Diane, who had been sitting at our kitchen table.
Chloe looked up from the fake message.
"Dad?"
I reached for the phone.
May you like
Before I touched it, another message appeared from the same number.
I KNOW YOU'RE READING THIS, NATHAN.
