Chapter 15 - The Application I Never Sent
The Northwestern application was real.
My grades.
My activities.
My essay.
My information.
But not my choices.
Someone had copied material from my common application and submitted it with a different personal statement.
The essay described me as a girl desperate to escape a "toxic home" and sever ties with family.
It sounded like me from a distance.
Up close, it was wrong.
Dad read one paragraph and looked sick.
"Who would do this?"
Mia whispered, "Mom."
Lauren had wanted proof that I planned to abandon them.
If I got accepted, she could show Dad the essay.
If I did not, no harm from her perspective.
A manufactured betrayal.
The application fee had been charged to our family card.
The submission came from the home desktop.
Dad's login.
Again.
He sat quietly for a long time.
"I made it easy for her to use me as a signature."
Yes.
The university withdrew the fraudulent application after speaking with us.
The Harper Foundation allowed me to use the award at my actual first-choice school, State University, where I had already been accepted into the honors program.
For the first time, I felt the future becoming mine again.
Then Dad's divorce attorney received discovery from Lauren.
Buried in the bank records was a payment we had not seen.
$14,000 to a private investigator.
Dad frowned.
"Who was she investigating?"
The invoice description said:
Background and surveillance - R. Palmer.
Grandma Ruth.
My chest tightened.
Lauren had hired someone to investigate my grandmother.
Why?
The investigator's report was attached.
Property records.
Retirement accounts.
A trust.
And one handwritten note scanned into the file:
Ruth plans to leave Claire the lake cabin.
Dad looked at me.
Grandma had never mentioned a lake cabin.
I called her.
She went silent.
Then said, "I was waiting until you graduated to tell you."
May you like
The cabin had belonged to my mother.
And Lauren had known about it for a year.
