Richard slowly lifted his eyes from my face to Samantha’s. His face was gray. “An apartment? In Lincoln Park?”
“It’s not just an office, Dad,” I continued. “It’s a luxury two-bedroom residential apartment at 1842 North Fullerton Parkway. Unit 4B. The rent is twenty-four hundred dollars every month. I have paid it thirty-four consecutive times through direct electronic transfer from my checking account.”
A collective gasp went up from the cousins. Aunt Linda’s hand flew to her collarbone. Uncle Greg stepped forward, his mouth open.
“She’s lying!” Samantha shrieked, her voice cracking into an ugly, shrill register that nobody in the family had ever heard before. She lunged forward, her hand reaching out to snatch the black cardstock folder from the table. “Richard, she’s inventing this! She’s mentally unwell! She’s been bitter about Natalie’s success for years, and now she’s trying to destroy my reputation in front of our family!”
“Don’t touch that folder, Samantha,” Richard said.
The tone was not loud. It was the voice my father used when an eight-hundred-pound boiler valve was about to shear its threads under three hundred pounds of pressure.
Samantha’s hand stopped three inches from the cardboard.
Richard reached down, his blunt, scarred fingers flipping open the black cover. Inside were thirty-four bank confirmation receipts, each bearing the Parkview Property Management stamp, each showing the twenty-four-hundred-dollar debit from my account, ending with the total Eric had calculated in bold, twelve-point font:
TOTAL PAID: $81,600.00
Richard stared at the number. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He simply stared at the figures, his chest rising and falling with slow, shallow breaths.
“Eighty-one thousand dollars,” he whispered.
“Richard, look at me!” Samantha pleaded, her composure disintegrating entirely. She reached for his shoulder, but he jerked his arm away as if she were made of boiling lye. “I was building something for us! For our future! Sydney volunteered to help! She wanted to be part of it! It was an investment in our social capital!”
“An investment?” Richard looked up, his voice cracking with a terrifying mixture of disgust and heartbreak. “You told me Sydney couldn’t afford to buy new tires for her car because she was blowing her money on clothes! You told me she was struggling with her bills and that’s why she couldn’t save for a home! You let me sit at that table last week and lecture my own daughter about financial discipline while she was carrying an eighty-thousand-dollar millstone around her neck that you tied to her?”
