Chapter 4 - The Paper Trail
My mother was the first to recover her tongue, though her southern-inflected Newport drawl had thinned into something sharp, brittle, and shrill.
"Thatcher, darling, that is an internal family financial arrangement," Blythe said, waving her hand dismissively while her eyes darted frantically toward the open hallway behind him. "Merritt offered to cover the secondary catering adjustments as her wedding gift to Sloan. We discussed it weeks ago. It was simply processed late by the accounting office."
"I didn't offer anything, Blythe," I said, leaning back into the nylon seat of the wheelchair. "I haven't spoken to Sloan about her wedding finances since July, when she demanded I buy her twelve-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choo reception shoes and I told her to get a second job."
Sloan whirled on me, her white silk robe billowing, her veneer of bridal innocence peeling away like wet parchment.
"You have six figures sitting in an investment portfolio, Merritt!" she shrieked, pointing an acrylic nail at my chest. "You live in a duplex! You don't have a lifestyle to maintain! You work for an insurance conglomerate that pays you massive quarterly bonuses, and you couldn't even give your only sister a decent gift! Dad said you had plenty of room on your corporate line!"
"My father," I said, turning my gaze to where Judson had just appeared in the corridor behind Thatcher, "committed federal wire fraud when he forged my signature on the merchant slip at eleven-forty-two last night."
Judson Vance looked older than his sixty-two years. In the gray morning light, the expensive dye in his hair couldn't hide the pale, sagging skin around his jowls or the slight tremor in his right hand. He was holding a leather portfolio under his arm—his ubiquitous prop, designed to make him look like an active venture capitalist when, in reality, his commercial brokerage had been insolvent for eighteen months.
"Lower your voice, Merritt," Judson commanded, stepping into the room with an attempt at his old patriarchal thunder. "There are guests downstairs in the garden loggia. We do not air domestic disputes in front of service staff."
He glared pointedly at Greer, who didn't even blink.
"Your service staff is about to be dismissed, Judson," Greer remarked coolly. "Along with the string quartet, the florists, and the valets. Because four minutes ago, the fraud division at Chase Commercial Bank officially flagged that forty-two-thousand-dollar transaction as an unauthorized felony breach."
Judson’s face lost the last vestige of its ruddy color. His mouth worked silently for two seconds before he turned on me, his eyes wide and bulging with pure, unadulterated panic.
"You called the bank?" he gasped. "On the morning of your sister’s wedding? Have you completely lost your mind?!"
"The card belongs to my employer, Dad," I said, keeping my voice dead level. "If I don't report an unauthorized forty-two-thousand-dollar draw within twelve hours of the transaction, I become legally complicit in corporate embezzlement. I lose my adjuster’s license. I face a grand jury indictment. Did you think Apex Marine was going to underwrite your champagne tower out of professional courtesy?"
"We were going to wire you the funds on Monday!" Blythe cried, her hands flying to her temples. "Judson has a settlement clearing from his commercial closing in Providence! It was a bridge loan, Merritt! A seventy-two-hour bridge loan!"
"There is no commercial closing in Providence, Blythe," Thatcher said.
The silence that followed was different this time. It wasn't the uncomfortable silence of a family argument; it was the suffocating, atmospheric vacuum that precedes a building collapse.
Thatcher pulled a folded legal document from his breast pocket.
"My father’s firm handles the municipal title registry for Bristol and Newport counties," Thatcher continued, his voice devoid of anger, carrying only the flat, clinical disappointment of an investor pulling out of a fraudulent venture. "I had his title examiner pull the records on the Vance family trust at eight o'clock this morning. Your house in Warwick has three separate mortgages on it, Judson. The secondary equity line was foreclosed three weeks ago. You don't have a closing pending. You have an auction notice scheduled for next Friday."
Sloan looked at her father, her mouth agape. "Dad? What... what is he talking about? You said you had the trust fund."
"The trust fund was liquidated five years ago to pay your credit card debt from London, Sloan," I said, resting my hands on the rubber armrests of my chair. "Every dime this family ever had was burned to keep you looking wealthy in front of people who don't even like you."
Sloan looked wildly between her parents, but Judson was staring at the floorboards, unable to lift his chin, and Blythe was clutching her pearl necklace so tightly the string looked ready to snap.
Then Sloan turned her fury back on the one person she had spent twenty years blaming for her own failures.
"You did this," she hissed, taking two violent strides toward my wheelchair, her hands balled into fists, her face contorted into something demonic. "You brought this into my room! You ruined my wedding day! You couldn't just stay at the hospital like a normal person! You had to come back here and poison Thatcher against me because you're a bitter, ugly, crippled spinster who will never have anyone love her!"
She raised her arm, her hand open, stepping forward to strike me across the face.
She never landed the blow.
May you like
Greer’s left hand caught Sloan’s wrist in midair with the crushing, iron grip of a woman who spent her youth handling steel cables on North Atlantic oil rigs. The crack of the impact was sharp and final.
"Step back, little girl," Greer whispered, her face inches from Sloan’s ear. "Or the next sound you hear will be your radial bone snapping to match your sister's knee."
