Chapter 4 - The Other Mother
By Monday morning, we had changed the locks.
Rob took the day off and called the lender named on the guarantee.
The first person transferred him twice.
The third said the account had already been flagged for review.
That was the first indication that our daughter wasn’t the only person Grant had lied to.
Detective Ruiz asked us not to contact other families ourselves until she could assess the situation.
We agreed.
Then another mother found us.
She was waiting outside our house when I returned from buying groceries.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “My name is Rebecca Chen. My son worked the fundraiser Friday.”
I left the grocery bags in the car.
“Is he all right?”
“I think so.”
She swallowed.
“He said a woman came in and took her daughter home. He’s been scared all weekend.”
I invited her inside.
Her son, Owen, was seventeen and played the cello.
Grant had promised him help paying for a summer conservatory program.
Rebecca had believed the charity was covering the fees.
Owen had believed his mother had signed a repayment agreement.
“He finally showed me the messages,” Rebecca said.
“Did Grant mention an audit?”
She looked up sharply.
“Yes.”
I gave her Ruiz’s number.
We didn’t compare the children’s detailed accounts. Neither of us wanted to muddy what they remembered.
But before she left, Rebecca put a hand over mine.
“I thought I was giving him an opportunity.”
“So did I.”
That afternoon, Grant called Rob fourteen times.
Rob let every call go to voicemail.
The fifteenth came from an unfamiliar number.
Rob answered before thinking.
I was folding laundry nearby when I heard Grant’s voice.
“You know me.”
Rob stood perfectly still.
“I thought I did.”
“Your wife has turned this into something ugly.”
“What did you tell my daughter about me?”
“I was trying to keep her motivated.”
“You told her I could go to prison.”
A pause.
“She misunderstood.”
Rob put the call on speaker.
“Then explain the messages.”
“I was under pressure.”
“That isn’t an explanation.”
Grant’s tone shifted.
“You want the whole truth? Ask Natalie why she was so eager to believe the worst.”
I stared at the phone.
He had always known where to press.
Years earlier, Rob and I had nearly separated after months of money arguments and exhaustion. Grant had been the person Rob called.
Now he was reaching back into that private wound.
Rob ended the call.
For a moment, he looked smaller than I had ever seen him.
“I told him everything,” he said.
I set down the towel.
“He used what we trusted him with.”
Rob rubbed both hands over his face.
“I should’ve noticed.”
We had both said those words so often they had begun to feel like an explanation.
But they weren’t.
They were simply somewhere to put the pain.
Upstairs, Sloane’s door opened.
She had heard enough.
“Please stop saying that.”
We looked toward the stairs.
Her voice shook.
“Every time you say you should’ve noticed, it sounds like I was doing something wrong right in front of you.”
I went to her.
“You weren’t.”
“Then stop talking like I was a warning you missed.”
Rob nodded slowly.
“You’re right.”
That evening, Elena came over with a folder.
Sloane had agreed to see her, although she kept one sleeve pulled over her hand.
Elena sat at the kitchen table.
“Your scholarship is real.”
Sloane stared at her.
“It was awarded by our studio. Mr. Mercer never funded it.”
“But he showed me a letter.”
“A false one.”
Elena slid the original award paperwork across the table.
It named a memorial scholarship established by a former student’s family.
Grant’s charity appeared nowhere.
Sloane touched the page.
Then she began to cry so hard that I thought she might be sick.
Elena waited until she could breathe.
“Your place is still yours.”
“I missed so much.”
“We’ll make a plan.”
Sloane looked down at her hands.
“What if I can’t dance anymore?”
Elena’s expression softened.
“Then we start by helping you feel safe in the room.”
After she left, Sloane opened the folder again.
A small note had been clipped to the award letter.
May you like
In Maya’s handwriting, it said:
I saved your spot at the barre.
