Chapter 7 - Grandma Ruth
Grandma Ruth answered on the second ring.
"Claire?"
Her voice broke on my name.
I started crying before I could speak.
"Grandma."
We talked for two hours.
She had sent birthday cards I never received.
Christmas packages that Lauren claimed were "probably lost."
Two letters after my seventeenth birthday.
Then the letter in Lauren's folder.
Ruth had eventually stopped because Lauren told her I wanted distance from "Mom's side of the family."
"I believed her," Grandma whispered. "I thought maybe seeing us hurt too much."
I felt sick.
Dad sat across the room, hearing every word.
He looked destroyed.
Grandma told me something else.
My mother had left a small life-insurance payment for me outside the college account.
Not huge.
$18,000.
Ruth had been custodian until I turned sixteen, then transferred it to Dad to hold for me.
I looked at him.
"What eighteen thousand dollars?"
Dad stood.
"I don't know."
Grandma went quiet.
"Michael, I mailed the cashier's check to your house two years ago. Lauren signed for it."
Dad's face went white.
We searched records.
The check had been deposited into their joint account.
Three days later, $12,000 moved to pay off Lauren's credit card.
The rest disappeared into household spending.
Dad sat at the kitchen table with his hands over his face.
"I didn't know."
I wanted to scream at those words.
I didn't know.
He had built a whole marriage around not knowing.
Grandma said quietly, "Claire, come stay with me if you want."
Dad looked up.
He did not argue.
That mattered.
I said I would think about it.
After the call, Dad opened every account he could access.
Then he found one more thing.
A credit card in my name.
Opened eight months earlier.
Balance: $6,430.
Charges included cosmetics, restaurants, and a weekend at a resort.
I had never owned a credit card.
May you like
Dad looked at the authorized user.
Mia Carter.
