Chapter 4 - THE HOUSE OF CARDS
My hands shook so violently the paper rattled. I read the sentence again, praying my sixty-one-year-old eyes were deceiving me.
“David, if you don’t wire the $200,000 to the Vance account by Friday, I’m sending Michael the photos from Seattle. You know what this will do to him.”
I felt a shadow fall over me. Michael was standing in the doorway of the study, his face pale. Lauren was right behind him, trying to peer over his shoulder.
"Mom?" Michael asked, his voice cracking. "What is it?"
I looked at my son, then down at the email in my hand, and then at the leather ledger resting in the drawer. Eleanor Vance wasn't a mistress. Eleanor Vance was a shell account.
And my husband, my strong, stoic David, had paid a two-hundred-thousand-dollar ransom just days before the cancer took him.
"Carol, give me that," Lauren said. She pushed past Michael, dropping the pretense of the concerned daughter-in-law. Her eyes were wild, panicked. She lunged toward me, reaching for the paper.
Before she could grab it, a small hand appeared out of nowhere and shoved a heavy brass paperweight across the desk, blocking Lauren's path.
It was Sophie.
My eight-year-old granddaughter stood between me and her mother, her small jaw set. "Don't yell at Grandma."
Lauren stopped, her face twisting in shock. "Sophie, get out of here right now."
"No." Sophie reached into the pocket of her little denim dress and pulled out a silver compass. It was tarnished, the glass slightly cracked. It had belonged to David's father. "Grandpa told me to give this to Grandma when the yelling started."
She pressed the cold metal into my free hand.
I looked down at it. David had kept this compass on his desk for decades.
"What is going on?" Michael demanded, stepping fully into the room. He looked at Lauren. "What photos from Seattle? Lauren, what is she talking about?"
Lauren’s confidence finally fractured. She backed up against the bookshelf, shaking her head. "It's nothing, Michael. It's a misunderstanding. Your father was paranoid—"
"Read it, Michael," I said, my voice eerily calm. I held the email out to him.
Michael took the paper. I watched his eyes scan the words. I watched the exact moment his heart broke. His chest stopped moving. The color drained from his lips.
"You..." Michael choked on the word. "You blackmailed my father while he was dying in hospice?"
"Michael, I had to!" Lauren cried out, tears spilling over her cheeks. "The boutique was $400,000 in debt! We were going to lose our house. I found out about Seattle, and I knew he had the money. He wouldn't give it to us because he hated me! I did it for us!"
"What happened in Seattle, Michael?" I asked softly.
Michael crumpled into the leather armchair opposite the desk. He put his head in his hands. "Three years ago," he whispered. "I went to a conference in Seattle. I... I relapsed, Mom. With the pills."
My heart dropped into my stomach. Michael had struggled with prescription painkillers in his twenties. We had spent years getting him clean. We thought it was over.
"I was high for four days," Michael sobbed. "I almost died in the hotel room. Dad flew out. He checked me into a private detox facility. He didn't tell you because it would have broken your heart. He promised it would be our secret, as long as I stayed clean. And I did, Mom. I swear to God, I have been clean ever since."
I looked at Lauren. "And you found out."
"I found the clinic receipts in Michael's coat," Lauren spat, cornered and vicious. "If word got out that a managing partner was a junkie, his firm would be ruined. I just asked David for a loan to cover my business. He refused. So I gave him a choice."
"You extorted a dying man to cover your gambling debts," Thomas Reed said, stepping into the room. He had been listening from the hallway. "Yes, Lauren. We know the boutique wasn't losing money because of the economy. We know about the online casinos."
Lauren whipped around to face the lawyer. "You have no proof of that!"
"Actually," I said, looking down at the heavy compass in my hand. I turned it over. Scratched lightly into the silver casing on the back were three numbers.
4-18-9.
David’s anniversary. And the combination to the heavy steel floor safe hidden beneath the rug in this very room.
I looked up at Lauren. "I think the proof is right under our feet."
Lauren's eyes darted to the Persian rug beneath my chair. Suddenly, she lunged. Not for the papers. Not for the safe.
May you like
She grabbed Sophie by the arm, yanking the child hard enough to make her cry out.
"We are leaving," Lauren snarled, pulling the terrified eight-year-old toward the door. "And if you ever want to see your granddaughter again, Carol, you will burn those papers."
