Chapter 4: The Transfer That Didn't Fit
It took me until four in the morning to find the account name.
The transfer had gone to a law firm.
Hargrove & Sills, LLC.
A small practice based in Austin, Texas.
I sat very still for a long time.
Then I searched the firm's name alongside my father's name.
Nothing.
Alongside Caleb's name.
Nothing.
Alongside my mother's name.
One result.
A county probate filing from eleven years ago.
My mother's name appeared as a secondary party.
The primary name on the filing was someone I had never heard of.
Raymond Aldiss.
I wrote the name down on the back of an envelope.
Stared at it.
Searched it separately.
Raymond Aldiss, Austin, Texas.
An obituary from eleven years ago.
Survived by his wife, Patricia, and one daughter.
The daughter's name was not listed.
I closed the laptop.
Sat in the kitchen with the overhead light on and the rest of the house dark.
The refrigerator hummed.
Outside, a car passed slowly.
I opened the laptop again.
Hargrove & Sills specialized in two things.
Estate law.
And private adoptions.
My hands were completely steady when I picked up my phone.
I don't know why I expected them to shake.
Maybe I was too tired.
Maybe some part of me had already been moving toward this answer for longer than I knew.
I called Caleb at 4:17 a.m.
He picked up on the second ring.
He had been awake.
"I found the Hargrove transfer," I said.
Silence.
"Caleb.
Who is Raymond Aldiss?"
He exhaled.
It was a long, slow sound, like something deflating.
"You need to hear this from Mom and Dad."
"I'm asking you."
"Lena—"
"I have been awake for two hours staring at a probate filing and a law firm that handles private adoptions.
I am not driving to Texas to hear this gently.
Tell me right now."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"Raymond Aldiss was your biological father."
The refrigerator kept humming.
"He d*ed eleven years ago," Caleb said.
"He left everything to you.
Mom and Dad used the Hargrove money to contest the will.
They didn't want you to know he existed.
They didn't want you to know what he left you."
I looked at the envelope on the table.
The name I had written in blue ink twenty minutes ago.
"How much?" I said.
"Lena—"
"How much did he leave me?"
Caleb's voice dropped to almost nothing.
"The estate was valued at just over four hundred thousand dollars.
Mom and Dad argued you were never legally his.
The contest dragged on for three years.
By the time it settled, the legal fees had eaten most of it." He stopped.
"You were awarded sixty-two thousand.
It went into a restricted account.
Mom and Dad were listed as custodians because you were still in college."
I did not speak.
"They transferred it into the emergency account," Caleb said.
"The one you thought you built yourself.
Lena — you didn't build that account.
It was already full when they gave you access to it.
They just never told you where the money came from."
The kitchen felt very far away from me suddenly.
Like I was watching it through glass.
"So the money I've been sacrificing to keep funded," I said slowly.
"The car payments I skipped.
The transfers I made."
"Were going on top of what was already there," Caleb said.
"Yes."
"And they've been spending it."
He didn't answer.
"Caleb.
They have been spending my inheritance from a father I never knew existed."
"Yes," he said.
Very quietly.
"That's what they've been doing."
I set the phone down on the table without ending the call.
I could hear him saying my name, small and distant, from the speaker.
I didn't pick it back up.
May you like
I sat there until the kitchen window started to go gray with early light.
Then I went and woke up Andrew.
