Chapter 3
"You were after her money."
My mother's face went pale in a way I'd genuinely never seen before — not embarrassment, not the mild sheepishness of someone caught in an ordinary bad habit, but the specific whiteness of someone realizing the ground they'd been standing on had just disappeared entirely.
"That withdrawal hasn't been processed," she said quickly, too quickly. "It's just a request. I was going to talk to you about it."
"When?" I asked. "Before or after it went through?"
She didn't have an answer ready, which told me more than any answer would have. I folded both documents and put them in my pocket, picked Aubrielle up, and told our remaining guests, as gently as I could manage under the circumstances, that the party was ending a little early.
My mother stayed rooted at the gift table for a long moment after everyone else had started gathering their things, and I watched something shift in her expression — not remorse exactly, more the visible recalibration of someone deciding how to salvage a version of this story where she still comes out sympathetic.
May you like
"You don't understand what Camille is going through," she started.
"Then tell me," I said. "Because right now what I understand is that you tried to take a quarter of a million dollars out of my six-year-old's trust fund on the same day you shoved her away from her own birthday gifts."
