Chapter2

Sarah immediately shifted into professional gear on the other end. "Do you want me to send a cease and desist first, or—"

"Pull our joint tax returns from the IRS for the last five years, as fast as you can," I ordered, grabbing my coat and car keys. "And book me on the next available flight back to New York."

"Where are you going?"

"To lay out every single transaction from all these years right in front of their faces. But before that, I need to go to the school and pick up my daughter."

The moment I stepped out of the airport terminal, my phone buzzed. It was Mark.

"Honey, I had a bad tone last night. Please don't take it to heart." Over the line, he had entirely shed last night's aggression. "Lily has been really moody lately because of her asthma. You suddenly freezing the FSA medical account will only look like a malicious punishment to her."

In my past life, whenever he pulled the "it's going to hurt Lily" card, no matter how ruthless I was at the negotiating table, I compromised immediately. In this life, I only found it laughable.

I pulled open the door of a cab. "Since her asthma is flaring up, where is the three-hundred-dollar prescription steroid inhaler that I approved the transfer for last week?"

The breathing on the other end predictably hitched.

"The pharmacy was out of stock, so I swapped it for a generic one to make do for now," he deflected, immediately raising his voice to adopt the posture of an exhausted parent. "You're always flying out of state, jumping across time zones. You have no idea how grinding the daily trivialities of taking care of an emotionally unstable teenager can be."

"A generic one?" I pressed lightly. "Where's the receipt?"

His tone instinctively turned defensive. "What exactly is wrong with you today? I've handled these family matters with full authority for years, and there has never been a problem."

"If you managed everything so perfectly, it shouldn't be hard to produce a single purchase receipt."

I gave the driver the name of Lily's private high school and slammed the car door shut.

A pregnant pause followed on the line. "Did someone say something to you?"

"I'm back, and I'm heading to the school right now."

"You can't go!" Panic plainly bled into his voice. "She's in the middle of classes! You're never home, and she's used to relying on me. You bursting in out of nowhere is only going to trigger her!"

I watched the snow violently striking the car window. That was the classic tactic of a fraud—packaging the mother-daughter estrangement they orchestrated themselves into a "safe boundary" that needed to be respected.

"Whether it triggers her or not, I'll see for myself." I hung up point-blank.

The screen lit up with a text from Sarah: The irrevocable trust is active. The request for the IRS joint tax returns has been filed. The forensic accountant needs a direction to investigate. Who do you suspect the money flowed to?

My fingertips hovered over the keyboard before typing a single name. Chloe.

After hitting send, a severe wave of nausea churned in my stomach.

She was the PTA president whom everyone in our neighborhood praised. Publicly, she was the picture-perfect widowed single mother who even offered free psychological counseling for our community. During those days when Lily's asthma was most frequent and her adolescent emotions were at their most fragile, it had always been Chloe by her side. In my past life, I was utterly grateful. Always feeling guilty for my lack of presence, I repeatedly begged her to look out for my daughter.

I made large donations to her PTA projects, gifted her a two-thousand-dollar designer necklace, and trusted her with all my heart.

Thinking back on it now, it was absurd and purely ironic.

She wore the luxury goods I bought her, lived in a house with a down payment funded by my daughter's 529 college savings, and in turn, manipulated Lily with a measly five-dollar Starbucks gift card. She would speak to my daughter in that gentle, toxic voice: "I'm not like your mother, who only cares about making money. I might not be that rich, but I can share half of my love with you."

The taxi rolled to a stop outside the high school gates. Right as I reached to push the door open, I caught sight of Lily on the open-air breezeway through the snow-streaked window.

My nails dug deeply into my palms. The other students were all bundled up in thick down puffers, but my daughter alone was wearing a pilled, secondhand fast-food uniform jacket.

Her frail body shivered violently in the blizzard. She clutched a red rescue inhaler in her hand, pressing down on it frantically and repeatedly.

At the cafeteria checkout line, the staff member on duty tapped the card reader.

"Lily, your card is already overdrawn by five dollars. You can't put anything on your tab today." The worker reached out, snatched the sandwich directly from Lily's hands, and tossed it back into the food basket. "Next!"

Lily abruptly hung her head and shoved the inhaler back into her pocket. "I know. I'm sorry."

Tears splashed against the back of my hand without warning.

The fifteen thousand dollars I wired into that FSA account religiously every month was more than enough for her to eat steak for every meal; enough for her to use the absolute best asthma medications on the market. Yet my own flesh and blood was out here in a blinding snowstorm, being publicly humiliated for a five-dollar sandwich.

I shoved the car door open and marched toward her through the accumulating snow. "Lily."

Her thin back went rigidly stiff. She turned around, her lips practically blue from the cold.

The fourteen-year-old girl stared at me, devoid of even a sliver of joy at seeing her mother. She took a step back, glaring at me with raw defensiveness.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was hoarse. "Did you come here just to make sure I really couldn't swipe another cent off my meal card?"