Chapter 6 - TWO DAYS LATER — THE DISCOVERY
Tuesday afternoon brought the inevitable climax of the drama.
I was sitting at my desk in my home office when my cell phone rang. It wasn't Mom, and it wasn't Sarah. It was an unrecognized number with a local Ohio area code. Figuring it might be a logistics delivery or a school matter, I swiped to answer.
"Hello?"
"Claire!"
It was my brother, David. David usually stayed completely neutral during family meltdowns, living three states away and working as an IT engineer, which meant he rarely got dragged into Mom and Amanda’s theatrical productions.
"Hey, David," I said cautiously. "Everything okay?"
"I don't know if 'okay' is the right word, but I am currently standing in Mom’s living room, and it looks like a crime scene," David said, his voice dropping to a low, bewildered whisper.
I blinked. "What are you talking about?"
"I flew in a day early to help Mom prep for Thanksgiving—even though she told me this morning that the big trip was off," David explained. "While she was upstairs hyperventilating on the phone with her travel agent, I went down to her desk in the den to look for her printer cable. Claire... I found her master project folder for the holiday."
I sat up straight in my ergonomic chair. "Her master project folder?"
"Yeah. The binder where she keeps all the itineraries, the guest lists, and..." David paused, taking a sharp breath. "The financial ledger. Claire, did you know Mom was charging everyone else two hundred dollars extra per family as a 'patriarchal coordination fee'?"
A cold, bitter laugh escaped my lips. "No. I didn't know that. But honestly, it tracks."
"It gets worse," David muttered, rustling papers on the other end of the line. "I looked at the deposit receipts. Mom didn't contribute a single dollar toward the Hocking Hills lodge. Not one penny. She took the extra 'coordination fees' everyone wired her over the last three months—totaling nearly four thousand dollars—and used it to pay for Amanda’s kitchen remodel."
My jaw dropped. "She used my holiday booking funds to remodel Amanda’s kitchen?"
"And that's why she wanted everyone to stay at her house on Friday and Saturday night," David continued, pieces clicking together in his mind. "Amanda’s kitchen was freshly redone, and Mom wanted to show it off to the relatives before heading to the lodge. That’s why she kicked you and the kids out of the guest room—she gave it to Amanda’s family so they could christen the new layout, and she figured you wouldn't mind freezing in the den like second-class citizens."
The full, ugly magnitude of my mother’s manipulation crashed over me all at once.
It wasn't just a thoughtless oversight. It wasn't just garden-variety family selfishness. It was an intentional, calculated financial and emotional scam. She had used my credit card to lock down a luxury resort, charged everyone extra under the table to pocket the profit, funnelled my money into Amanda’s house upgrades, and treated my children like stray dogs she could shove into an unheated hallway.
"Are you still on speaker, David?" I asked, my voice dangerously steady.
"No, I’m holding the phone to my ear in the hallway. Why?"
"Put me on speaker right now," I instructed. "Put your phone right on the coffee table in the middle of the living room where Mom and Amanda can hear you."
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There was a brief pause, the sound of footsteps shuffling across hardwood, and then David’s voice echoed clearly through the phone: “Alright, you’re on speaker. Mom and Amanda just walked into the room.”
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