Chapter 7 - The Second House
I reached my parents’ bank before Dad finished signing the fraud affidavit.
He looked ten years older than he had at dinner two days earlier.
“There’s a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar line of credit,” he said.
Mom sat beside him twisting a tissue between her fingers.
“I signed something,” Dad admitted.
“What?”
“Dileia said it was a guarantor form for her business.”
I stared at him.
“You didn’t read it?”
His face tightened.
“I trusted my daughter.”
So had I, once.
The document Dad signed gave limited authority to use their home as secondary security for a business obligation.
Mom’s signature appeared too.
She denied signing it.
That meant at least one forgery and one catastrophically careless signature.
Patricia joined us by video.
“Do not sign anything else,” she said. “Do not transfer money. Do not let Dileia frame this as a family repayment plan.”
Mom began crying again.
“She said she only needed a month.”
“For what?” I asked.
Mom looked at Dad.
Dad answered.
“To close a development deal.”
“What development?”
“Townhomes near Lake Norman.”
I knew immediately something was wrong.
Dileia had never developed anything in her life.
She sold three houses in a good year.
At four that afternoon, I searched county records.
No land in her name.
No pending purchase by Caldwell Residential Holdings.
Then Marcus, the buyer’s agent who had helped me find the duplex, called.
“I heard something weird through another broker,” he said.
“What?”
“Your sister’s been telling people she controls an off-market duplex package.”
“Package?”
“Three properties.”
“I own one.”
“I know.”
My throat went dry.
“What are the other two?”
Marcus gave me the addresses.
I wrote them down.
May you like
One belonged to a retired teacher.
The other belonged to a man who had died four months earlier.
