Chapter 6 - My Mother Was Dead
My mother had been dead for nine years.
Lauren knew that.
Everyone at school knew that.
Yet someone had told a scholarship committee, "I'm Claire's mother, and she is withdrawing."
Dad called the number that afternoon.
The committee coordinator remembered the conversation.
"She sounded annoyed," the woman said. "She told us Claire had changed her mind about college and asked us to stop calling."
Dad closed his eyes.
"Did she give a name?"
"Lauren Dawson."
There was no room left for misunderstanding.
Dad drove to the hotel.
I did not go.
For once, I did not need to watch someone be confronted to know I deserved the truth.
He came back two hours later looking ten years older.
"She admitted it."
I sat on the porch steps.
"Why?"
"She said she was scared."
"Of what?"
"That if you got enough scholarship money, you'd leave and never come back."
I laughed bitterly. "So she made sure I'd need you financially?"
Dad sat beside me.
"She also said Mia was struggling and she didn't think it was fair that one daughter got everything while the other got nothing."
"I worked for everything."
"I know."
"Do you?"
He flinched.
Good.
I was tired of protecting him from my anger.
"You knew she compared us. You knew Mia took my clothes. You knew Lauren called me dramatic every time I complained."
"I didn't know it was this bad."
"Because you didn't want to know."
He looked down.
That silence was the closest thing to an honest answer.
Then he handed me a folder he had brought back from the hotel.
Lauren had thrown it at him during their argument.
Inside were copies of bank statements.
School emails.
And a letter from my maternal grandmother, Ruth, dated eleven months earlier.
Claire,
I have tried calling you three times. Your father says you are busy, but Lauren told me you no longer want contact with us. I hope that isn't true.
I stared at Dad.
"You told Grandma I was busy?"
"I never spoke to Ruth."
May you like
My grandmother had not abandoned me.
Someone had been cutting people out of my life one message at a time.
