Chapter 2: Over Nothing
I listened to every voicemail.
All seventeen of them.
My father's voice got louder with each one.
My mother cried.
Caleb called me selfish, unstable, and said I was "destroying the family over nothing."
Over nothing.
I sat at my kitchen table — still in the state where I'd just gotten married — and I opened the folder I had printed three weeks earlier.
The one I found when I went looking for the mortgage statements.
What I discovered wasn't an accident.
It wasn't a mistake.
For two years, my parents had been quietly withdrawing money from the emergency account I funded.
The one I set up after Dad's health scare.
The one I told them was only for medical bills or the mortgage.
They had used $23,400 of it.
Not for the mortgage.
Not for medical bills.
For Caleb.
His truck payments.
His credit card debt.
A $4,000 "loan" that went directly to Madison's boutique business that failed in eight months.
I had skipped my own car payment to keep that account full.
I finally picked up on call 316.
My father didn't even say hello.
"Do you have any idea what you've done to this family?"
I said, "Yes.
I finally do."
Then Caleb got on the line.
His voice was low and tight.
"Lena.
There are things about that account you don't fully understand.
Things Mom and Dad were never supposed to tell you."
My hand went cold.
"What things, Caleb?"
He paused for a long time.
"You need to come home.
There's something you were never meant to find out."
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What secret was Lena never supposed to know — and why did her own family hide it from her?
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