Chapter 5
By the time I reached my parents’ house, the wedding flowers had begun to wilt in their buckets on the church porch.
Paige opened the front door before I knocked. Her eyes went to the folder under my arm, then to my face.
“Lauren’s here,” she said. “Mom’s upstairs.”
It wasn’t an invitation, exactly. But she stepped aside.
In the dining room, Lauren stood by the window with her arms crossed. A stack of mail sat unopened on the table beside a silver bowl of lemons. The house smelled of furniture polish and coffee, so familiar that for a moment I was a child again, waiting to find out whether the questions I asked had made the room uncomfortable.
I set my folder on the table.
“I’m not here to accuse either of you,” I said.
Lauren’s shoulders stayed tight. “You brought bank statements.”
“I brought what I have. I want to see what you have.”
Paige pulled out a chair but didn’t sit. “You said we should look through our wedding records.”
“I did.”
She studied the folder. “And now?”
“Now I’m asking you to look with me.”
A long pause opened between us. From upstairs came the faint thump of a drawer closing.
Paige sat first. Lauren joined her, though she kept one hand around her phone. I took out Arthur’s original statements and the receipt bearing a signature that wasn’t mine. I placed them between us, careful not to crease the old paper.
Paige glanced at the receipt.
“Is that the one you said you never got?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t ask me to prove it. That small restraint hurt more than an argument might have.
Lauren leaned closer to the statements. “This says your money went into the foundation.”
“It says it was transferred there as a temporary loan.”
“And then to Dad’s company?” Paige asked.
“That’s what the account number suggests. Dad identified it as his company’s.”
Neither sister spoke. I could hear a refrigerator motor starting in the kitchen.
Paige opened her purse and took out a folded sheet of paper. The edges were soft from being handled. “I found this in the folder where I kept wedding contracts.”
She smoothed it with the side of her hand. It was a brief note on my father’s letterhead, addressed to her. The words were plain: family advance, to be reconciled after the wedding expenses were finalized. A handwritten total sat near the bottom, followed by Richard’s initials.
“Mom told me she’d covered the vendors,” Paige said. “Dad called this the accounting side of it. I thought it meant they were sorting out what they’d spent.”
“Did you owe them something?” I asked.
“I asked once.” Her mouth tightened. “Dad said it was a family matter and I didn’t need to worry about the details.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I believed he was my father.”
The words came out sharper than she seemed to intend. Paige looked down at the note, rubbing her thumb over a crease.
Lauren set her phone on the table. “Mine wasn’t written up like that.”
She scrolled through a folder of saved messages, then stopped. “Dad told me some of the wedding costs were being treated as an advance, not a gift. He said it would all be settled inside the family.”
“Did he tell you what account it came from?”
“No.” Lauren glanced from my statements to Paige’s note. “I didn’t know there was a reason to ask.”
A familiar answer, but not the same as indifference. I watched Lauren’s finger hover over the screen. She looked less like someone protecting our parents and more like someone reading a message she’d never quite understood.
“Do you have the original?” I asked.
“I think so. Maybe in the email chain with the venue.” She locked her phone. “I can search when I get home.”
“Would you send me a copy?”
Lauren hesitated, then nodded. “Yes.”
A floorboard creaked above us. Margaret appeared in the doorway with her chin lifted and her hands clasped in front of her.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Records,” Paige said.
“Emma, you’ve made your point. Don’t turn your sisters into evidence.”
“I’m not.”
“You walked into this house with statements and a camera full of ledger pages. What did you expect them to think?”
“I expected them to see what was on the page.”
Margaret’s gaze landed on the note in front of Paige. “That was a private family arrangement.”
“Then why does it have an account reference?” I asked.
Her expression changed—not much, but enough. Her eyes moved to the note, then back to me.
“Because your father kept records,” she said. “That isn’t a crime.”
“I haven’t called it one.”
“You’ve put your sisters in the middle of a dispute they had nothing to do with.”
Paige’s jaw tightened. “We’re already in the middle if our wedding records use the same language.”
Margaret turned toward her. “You don’t know what you’re looking at.”
“Then explain it,” Paige said.
For a beat, my mother said nothing. Her fingers pressed together so hard the knuckles paled.
“This is exactly what I mean,” she said at last. “Your sister arrives with a theory, and suddenly everyone is expected to choose sides.”
“I asked them to compare their own paperwork.”
“You’ve always been good at making a question sound like an accusation.”
The old phrase slid into the room, polished by years of use. Difficult. Too suspicious. Always looking for something to be wrong.
I looked at the paper receipt with my name on it. Once, I might have softened my voice to keep the peace. Instead, I kept my hands flat on the table.
“I’m not asking them to choose sides,” I said. “I’m asking them not to stop looking just because you’re uncomfortable.”
Margaret’s eyes flashed. “You have no idea what this will do to this family.”
“I know what not looking has done.”
Paige looked between us, and I saw the old instinct in her—the wish to step in, smooth the words, restore the room to something everyone could survive. But this time she didn’t reach for our mother’s hand or tell me to lower my voice.
She looked back at her note.
“I’m keeping a copy,” Lauren said.
Margaret turned to her. “Lauren.”
“I said I’m keeping a copy.” Lauren’s voice trembled, but she didn’t take it back. She photographed the note with her phone, then checked the image before sliding the paper toward Paige. “I’ll find the emails, too.”
Paige folded the note once, then stopped and opened it again.
“I’ll compare this against the vendor statements,” she said. “I’m not saying I know what it means.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I said.
That answer seemed to leave her nowhere to hide, but it also left her free to move.
My mother stepped closer to the table. “You’re both letting Emma make this worse.”
“No,” Paige said quietly. “We’re trying to understand it.”
Margaret looked at me as if I had taken something from her. Perhaps I had: the certainty that we would all keep our questions neatly separated, where no one could see how they touched.
Paige turned the note toward the window, where the afternoon light fell across the bottom edge. She leaned in, then drew it closer.
“What?” I asked.
She didn’t answer at first. Her face had gone still.
May you like
Beside the handwritten total, in faint type, was a reference number. Paige set the note beside Arthur’s statement and placed one finger under the digits.
“Emma,” she said. “This account reference—it’s the same one on your statement.”
