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“How are your classes?” he asks as he crosses his leg over his knee.
“You know how they are, just fine. I need to ask you something.” I pull my eyebrows together.
“Please, go on.” He waves his hand at me. He’s always so cold, never warm. Never caring.
“What happened to my mother?”
His face is a blank mask. “She disappeared. She took—”
“No! What really happened? Don’t lie to me. I know she didn’t just leave. That’s a bunch of horseshit. I deserve to know what actually happened,” I interrupt him.
My dad lets out a long breath. “You already know, or you wouldn’t have come here.” I give him a curt nod and let him continue. “Your mother, God I loved her, she fell out of love with me. Or she got bored. I … I don’t know. But we were not enough.” There’s a strain in his voice, but I can’t tell if it’s real or a front he’s putting on.
“That’s the thing, Dad. Why? I just don’t understand how she could leave us, leave me. That doesn’t seem like something she would do.” I shake my head at the thought.
“Well, she did. She was seeing someone. You know the daughter of the man she was cheating with.” He frowns as he fiddles with the buttons on his shirt.
“Phoenix.”
He nods. “Yes, but it doesn’t end there. It wasn’t just the infidelity. They were conspiring to take down Emerson Industries. And this was going on longer than I realized. Right under my nose.” My father gets up and walks over to his bar in the corner of the room and pours some amber liquid in a glass for himself. He takes a small sip and then walks back over to me.
“I don’t understand.” I lean forward with my hands resting on my knees. “Why?”
“Trivits. You know the name, correct?”
I nod. “Yeah. The software guy.”
“Well, he was hired by your mother when she thought our accounting process could use an update. I trusted her, since that was her side of things here, handling the accounting department. So, I gave her full reign to do as she wanted. I mean, your mother was good at her job. We had a lot of government contacts come in, and we really did need a better way of keeping track of the financials.” He pauses for a moment. “Trevor Hayes worked for us as an accountant. He lived in the town west of here, Fulton.”
He lets out a long sigh.
“He was a good employee, well, until he wasn’t.” He stands and walks towards the windows that look out towards the ocean. “Your mother and him, they hit it off or something. That software was used to help steal funds from the company. Minuscule amounts at a time, but enough to hurt us. They took the money and had it stored somewhere. I have no idea where. I’m sure some offshore account. I’ve been trying to have my investigators find where that money is, but they hid it well.”
“But why? Why would she do that?” I run my hands through my hair. Nothing makes sense. Why would my mom cheat on my dad and try to take the company money? She had access to all the money she could ever need.
“I don’t know. The plan, from what I gathered, was to make it look like I was stealing money from my own company. We would lose our contracts, the defense contracts. Use it to sink us somehow. Wrap the whole town in their mess. They were going to take off, start a life, and avoid the chaos they created.”
“But they didn’t make it.”
“I think your mom got cold feet. Came to her senses and wanted to back out. But when Trevor found out she didn’t want to go through with it …” My dad pauses and looks up at the ceiling. “He was afraid what would have happened had they been caught, so he killed them both.”
My heart is racing, my muscles are tight, and I’m ready to punch things. He took my mother from me in a pure act of selfishness.
As I try to make sense of what my father is telling me, I still feel like it’s not the full truth. Something isn’t sitting right.
“I don’t want that girl getting any help in life. Her family has destroyed ours. She deserves the slums. I’m furious the board even let her in on the sole reason because of who she’s related by marriage too.” He lets out a frustrated growl. “I’m sorry I kept this from you. I just didn’t want you to think any less of your mom.”
I nod, but I can’t find the words to speak. My mind, my heart, everything is being pulled in so many directions I don’t know which way is up or down. There’s a part of me that wants to ruin her, rip her to shreds for what her father has done. But the other part of me what’s to protect her, knowing none of this was her doing. She’s an innocent. Her dad and her mom set this in motion. She’s probably clueless to it all.
I rub my palms into my eyes. I can feel a headache starting to form. I need to get out of here and try to make some of this, any of this, make just little sense. She isn’t after us, she wants nothing to do with us. What the hell is my father afraid of? Her?
I leave my dad’s office and head back to campus. The entire drive, the conversation replays in my head. Her family has destroyed mine. My mother may have tried to save us by not going through with it, but that just got her killed. But why did her mom kill herself? What tipped her over that she felt she couldn’t move on in life?
And she left her daughter to fend for herself.
Gripping the wheel tightly, I let out a howling scream. For my mom, for Phoenix. There are so many lies, so much betrayal. I’m supposed to get rid of her, but she may hold the key to figuring out why this all happened. She could hold the answers I need to why my mom chose Trevor over me. Getting rid of her like what my father wants will never get me answers.
There’s a line drawn in the sand, and I have no idea what side I’m on anymore.