Chapter 2 - The Screams That Shook the Yard
""No! Dad, please! Don't do this to me!"" Harper wailed, collapsing forward onto the bumper of the truck. It was the same dramatic performance she had perfected as a teenager—the crocodile tears that had always prompted Dad to open his wallet, write a check, or punish me whenever an argument broke out between us.
For years, that act had worked like clockwork. Whenever I asked for twenty dollars to pay for high school shop materials or new tires for my beat-up Chevy pickup, Dad would scowl and utter the phrase that defined my youth: “Money doesn't grow on trees, son.” But if Harper so much as whimpered about needing a new dress for a dance, four hundred dollars would magically appear on the kitchen counter.
Yet this time, Dad didn't comfort her. He didn't rush to hold her hand or tell her everything would be fine. Instead, his eyes remained fixed on the white envelope beneath my hand.
I picked up the first envelope. It was postmarked from eleven months ago, bearing the date when Harper first claimed the payment system went offline. Using a pocketknife from my utility belt, I carefully slit the top fold.
Inside was a single folded sheet of notebook paper and eight crisp, unspent one-hundred-dollar bills, along with four twenties and a ten. Exactly eight hundred and ninety dollars.
Dad swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. ""Why... why is the cash still in there?""
I opened the second envelope. Eight hundred and ninety dollars.
I opened the third, fourth, and fifth. The identical amount of cash spilled out onto the hood, fluttering slightly in the morning breeze. Tens of hundreds of dollars in crisp currency—money my father had bled for, money he had taken out high-interest personal loans to secure, money my mother had suffered in freezing cold without a working furnace to provide.
""Eight months of payments were credited to the auto loan,"" I said, holding up the lender's official recovery manifest. ""The loan company received eight payments from an automated bank draft linked to an obscure business account. But you gave her twelve cash envelopes, Dad. Which means four of these envelopes were never paid to the lender... and these other eight envelopes on the hood were never spent on the truck at all.""
""I don't understand,"" Eleanor gasped, stepping closer, her hands trembling over her mouth. ""If she didn't use Richard's envelopes to pay the truck... where did the eight payments come from? And why is all of Richard's money sitting right here?""
Harper was weeping uncontrollably now, crouched beside the front tire. But it was Adam who finally broke.
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Adam, who had kept his mouth shut for years, looked up with hollow, exhausted eyes. He wasn't wearing his usual arrogant smirk. His clothes were wrinkled, his posture defeated.
""Tell them, Harper,"" Adam said, his voice flat and dead. ""Or by God, I will.""
