He’d been quietly supporting her using Piper’s inheritance.
After he threw Piper out, she’d eventually managed to track Tessa down. That year, Tessa had been expecting a baby but grew seriously ill during childbirth. The father had left long before that. Tessa’s own mother had passed away, and she knew no other relatives, so she’d asked Piper to help care for the newborn until they could figure something out between them.
“We were struggling, no support anywhere, since my college fund had already been drained,” Piper said. “She didn’t know who else to call. I offered to come talk to you.”
I looked at Dalton’s granddaughter, sleeping in my arms, and thought about the entire year I’d spent believing my silence was the glue holding something together.
The glue had been the leash.
Part Five: Three Calls
I stood up. My legs held. “I need to make some calls before your father gets home. I need you to trust me.”
Piper searched my face for the mother she’d left behind a year earlier. I don’t know what she found there. But she nodded.
I made three calls.
Franny picked up first. “I’ve been waiting years for you to call me for this,” she said. “Bring everything.”
I’ve been waiting years for you to call me for this.
Elden picked up on the second ring, still had the original trust paperwork sitting in a banker’s box in his garage. Promised to overnight copies. I called Detective Marsh next, who’d taken my report a year earlier, and forwarded him Piper’s recording.
Then I sent my daughter and the baby to the back bedroom.
Dalton walked in cheerfully that evening, asked what I was making for dinner. I set a copy of the folder’s documents on the counter.
“Tell me again about the account my father left for Piper?”
His face shifted through three expressions before settling on anger. “Don’t start. Whose name is on this mortgage? Whose paycheck feeds you?”
I didn’t raise my voice. “The fund is drained. What you showed me was forged. You threatened our daughter and me. The police already have the recording. Franny confirmed the transfers to your other daughter. To Tessa.”
Franny confirmed the transfers to your other daughter.
“You’ve got nowhere to go, Delia.”
I stood my ground. He tried once more, using the voice he’d always used to reel me back in — patient, reasonable, the voice of a man who’d never once had to raise it to win.
