A little loan.
Two hundred and forty thousand dollars.
The home Peter and I had spent our entire marriage paying for.
Daniel looked at her with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Did you forge my signature, too?”
Vanessa said nothing.
And that silence answered him.
He lowered himself into his chair.
I had never seen my son look so thoroughly defeated.
For a moment, I almost reached for him.
It was an instinct older than reason, the same instinct that had made me run toward him whenever he fell off his bicycle or woke from a nightmare.
But my hand remained at my side.
Because I remembered him pointing toward the door.
I remembered the words he had spoken while my dinner lay scattered across the table.
And I finally understood that loving my son didn’t require protecting him from the consequences of his choices.
“Daniel,” I said, “I need you to listen carefully.”
He lifted his head.
“I have already contacted an attorney. The bank has stopped the application, and the documents have been reported. Nobody is taking money from this property.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened.
“You went to a lawyer behind our backs?”
“You went to a bank using my name.”
“You’re going to destroy our family over paperwork?”
“No,” I answered. “The paperwork is how I discovered what was already happening to our family.”
Vanessa grabbed her handbag.
“You’ll regret this.”
She moved toward the hallway, then stopped beside June.
“Come on. We’re leaving.”
June didn’t move.
Her eyes shifted from her mother to her father and finally to me.
“Can I stay with Grandma tonight?”
