inside, I realized that the Sunday dinner had only exposed a small part of a much bigger family secret…
Inside the envelope were bank statements, folded legal documents, and three years of private correspondence between Christa and her mother, Elaine.
I sat down, pulled out my reading glasses, and began to read.
Gerald and Elaine were not wealthy. They had never been wealthy. Gerald’s business had collapsed nearly eight years ago, drowning them in debt. The designer clothes, the luxury country club memberships, the lavish European vacations—every single appearance of affluence they projected had been financed through a web of credit lines and covert subsidies.
And who had been funding those subsidies?
Christa.
From the day she married Owen, Christa had maintained a separate bank account. Every month, the money I sent under the belief that it was easing my son’s mortgage or clothing little Maya was transferred directly into
Comments