Chapter 6 - The Secret Bank Account
Two days after I put Krista and Pete up in the extended-stay hotel, the true reason behind my mother’s frantic takeover scheme finally came to light.
Krista called me on a Thursday afternoon while Clara was down for her nap. Her voice sounded completely different—stripped of the frantic anxiety that usually defined her, replaced by a hollow, stunned dread.
"Jocelyn," Krista said quietly. "Pete and I went through the storage bins we packed from Mom's attic last year. You need to come down to the hotel. Or I can bring something to you."
"What did you find?" I asked, sensing the gravity in her voice.
"You know how Dad left us that small commercial parcel off Highway 74 when he passed away twelve years ago?"
Our biological father had died when I was fourteen. He was a quiet, hardworking drywall contractor who had always worried about our future after his divorce from our mother. Before he died of lung cancer, he had established a trust containing a two-acre commercial lot, designating Mom as the trustee until Krista and I turned twenty-five.
"Yeah," I replied. "Mom told us the county seized that land for unpaid property taxes back in 2016. She said Dad never kept up with the municipal assessments."
"She lied, Jo," Krista said, her voice shaking with rage. "She didn't lose that land. She sold it to a commercial strip-mall developer for three hundred and eighty thousand dollars eight years ago."
The room seemed to spin. I sat down heavily on the edge of my bed. "What did you say?"
"I have the closing settlement statement right here in my hands," Krista said, weeping. "It was tucked inside Dad's old tax folders that Mom told me to shred three months ago. I forgot to take them to the dump. The sale went through on July 14, 2016. The proceeds were deposited directly into a private trust account in her name."
"Three hundred and eighty thousand dollars?" I repeated, the number ringing in my ears like a siren. "That money was supposed to be split fifty-fifty between you and me when we reached adulthood."
May you like
"She kept every dime," Krista explained. "And that's not even the worst part. I called our cousin Sarah who works at First National Bank. Greg's construction business went belly-up six months ago. They took out a second mortgage on the SouthPark house to cover his payroll debts, and the bank initiated foreclosure proceedings last week. Mom and Greg are broke, Jocelyn. They are three weeks away from losing their house."
The pieces fell together with terrifying clarity. Mom hadn't wanted to move in to help me with the baby. She hadn't wanted to help Krista with her rent. Mom was facing total bankruptcy and public ruin. She needed my four-bedroom house as her new empire before the sheriff served the foreclosure notice on her SouthPark mansion.
