Chapter 8 - The Family Group Chat
By morning, every cousin I hadn't spoken to in years had an opinion about my life.
My mother had posted a photograph of the Hawthorne house beneath a long message about "ungrateful children" and "elderly parents facing eviction." She wrote that I had stolen the family home and was using Lily as a weapon.
No mention of the mortgage, the forged deed, or the fake pickup note.
A cousin named Paul commented, Shame on you, Claire.
I typed six replies, deleted all six, and called Maya.
"Can I publish the documents?"
"You can say the facts are disputed and being handled by counsel," she said. "Don't give a social-media fight the power to complicate the legal one. Save the posts."
At work, my supervisor, Denise, shut her office door and pushed a box of tissues toward me.
"Someone called here asking whether you had access to patient money," she said.
I went cold. "My mother?"
"The caller wouldn't give a name. I told them your work is excellent and ended the call. Are you okay?"
"No," I said. "But I'm handling it."
Denise nodded. "Tell me what support you need."
I nearly cried because it took a stranger's ordinary decency to remind me what decency looked like.
That evening Aunt June called. She was my mother's younger sister, the one who sent birthday cards even when the rest of the family forgot.
"I saw Elaine's post," June said. "Honey, is any of it true?"
"I own the house because I rescued it from foreclosure. They signed the papers."
"I thought so. Your mother asked me last spring whether I could talk you into cosigning. She was furious when I told her to get a lawyer instead."
I told June about dinner, the bracelet, the fake deed, and the camp. She didn't interrupt. When I finished, I heard her let out a long breath.
"Your mother always did confuse love with obedience," she said.
"I thought if I helped enough, they'd finally see me."
"They saw you just fine. They saw someone they could ask for anything."
Then June grew quiet.
"Claire, there's something you need to know. I visited your father after Christmas. I saw a deposit slip on his desk."
May you like
"What deposit?"
"Twenty-eight thousand dollars. And the money didn't go to Rachel."
