“Looks that way.”
Six months ago, I might have found a reason to doubt what was right in front of me. Not this time.
“I need to tell Kyle.” I reached for my phone, then stopped. “No.”
“You still want me at that table?”
“Why?”
“Because Lauren is already coming to dinner tomorrow.”
I looked at the photograph, then at the records spread across Ethan’s table.
Tomorrow night, Lauren was going to walk into dinner thinking she still controlled the story.
“If I call Kyle tonight, Lauren gets hours to invent another story.” I closed the folder. “Tomorrow she can tell it with all of this sitting in front of her.”
“Who invited him?”
Ethan watched me for a moment. “You still want me at that table?”
I looked at the photograph of Laura.
“More than ever.”
Before I left, I printed Mom’s transfer records and added them to Ethan’s screenshots.
By the time I closed the folder, Lauren’s history and my mother’s money were sitting side by side.
“Get him out now!”
The next day, at seven in the evening, Lauren was already seated when I brought out the coffee, smiling her practiced smile, one hand resting on Kyle’s forearm. Then the doorbell rang.
I took my time getting up. “I’ll get it.”
Ethan stepped inside behind me, folder under his arm.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Lauren’s face drained of color. “Who invited him?”
“Ask your wife.”
I’d never seen her look afraid before.
“Get him out,” she snapped, her voice cracking. “He has no right to be here. Get him out now!”
Ethan set the folder in front of Kyle.
Kyle flipped through Mom’s transfers, Ethan’s old screenshots, then stopped at the photograph labeled Laura.
“There’s nothing to explain.”
Kyle held up the top page. “What is this?”
“Ask your wife,” I said. “Ask her who Mom’s money actually paid after the accident.”
Lauren barely looked at the papers. “Marisol handled part of the repair. Rachel doesn’t know what she’s looking at.”
“Then explain it,” Kyle said.
“There’s nothing to explain. Rachel’s been looking for a reason to hate me for years, and now she conveniently shows up with my ex-boyfriend?”
“So? I owed her money.”
“Fiancé,” Ethan said quietly.
Lauren’s eyes snapped toward him.
I pulled one of the screenshots from the folder. “Marisol asked Ethan for money two years before your accident. She told him you already owed her.”
Lauren’s face changed, but only for a second. “So? I owed her money. That doesn’t mean…”
“Is that true?”
“Mom thought she was paying for your car,” I cut in. “You gave her Marisol’s payment information and told her it was part of the repair bill.”
Mom looked at Lauren. “You told me that was for the car.”
“It was complicated.”
“No,” I said. “It was simple. Twelve hundred went to the body shop. The rest went to someone you already owed.”
Kyle stared at her. “Is that true?”
“You never said a word about any of this.”
Lauren looked from him to my mother, then at the papers spread across the table.
“Rachel set this up,” she said finally. “She’s dating Ethan. How do you know they didn’t put this together?”
I almost laughed. “Because I didn’t even know his ex’s name until last night.”
Ethan slid the old photograph across the table. “And I didn’t know Rachel’s sister-in-law was Laura.”
“Sweetheart, if you’d told me…”
Kyle picked it up. “Laura?”
Lauren said nothing.
“You told me you covered the SUV yourself,” he said. “You never said a word about Mom’s money. You never said a word about any of this.”
Lauren’s hands tightened around the edge of the table. “Fine. You want to know how it started?”
His eyes were red.
“Yes,” I said. “Please.”
“My mother was sick for two years before she died. By the end, there were forty-one thousand dollars in medical bills. I was twenty-four, and I had no idea how to pay them.”
Mom’s face crumpled. “Sweetheart, if you’d told me…”
“I borrowed from Ethan first. Then when he said no, I borrowed from the next person, and the next. At first, every dollar really was for Mom. But after she died, the debts didn’t disappear. I started lying to survive. Then it worked. So I kept going.”
I want a list of every person you owe.
