Meet Cute(88)

The screen on my father’s desktop finally registers a login and I punch in his password, which is stuck to the corner of the display with a Post-it. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, other than something that will explain why Linda needs this money so badly, and why she feels it’s rightly hers.

The folders with my father’s documents are neatly labeled and organized, as was normal for my parents. I scroll through them, noting one with my name, one with Emme’s, and lower down is Linda’s, which would make sense as she was supposed to be Emme’s legal guardian until about six months ago. I click on Linda’s, and several subfolders pop up. I pause when I reach one labeled Loans. Clicking again I’m met with at least twenty separate documents, each individually dated, going as far back as fifteen years ago. I open the most recent, dated not long before my parents passed.

Apparently, Linda borrowed five thousand dollars from my parents. I open the next one down, dated several months earlier, and find yet another loan, this time for seven thousand dollars. Another one, dated a few months before my thirtieth birthday, is substantially larger, at fifteen thousand dollars.

There seems to be a lull, a period of two years in which no loans were issued, but before that my parents sporadically lent Linda money. Sometimes it was a few thousand dollars, but more than once they were in excess of ten thousand.

I’m sure if I went back through my parents’ bank records I’d be able to track all the money they loaned her over the years, which is a lot.

Before I think too much about what I’m doing, I pick up my cell and call Kailyn. It doesn’t even finish ringing once before she answers.

“Hey. Is everything all right? How are you?”

“I’m…okay.” That’s not really true right now, but it’s an automatic response. “How are you?”

“Happy to hear your voice,” she says softly.

Her honesty pulls my attention back to her. “What’re you doing right now?”

“Uh, not a lot, how about you?”

“I found some stuff on my dad’s computer.” I hit Print on the loan documents. I’m sure there must be a folder in my parents’ filing cabinets with signatures. The most recent are signed, scanned PDFs, but the older ones are drafts with no signatures.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Financial stuff connected to Linda that might explain why she wanted custody so badly…” I trail off as I note the time in the corner of the screen; I didn’t realize it was almost midnight. “But it can wait.”

“I’m not going to sleep anytime soon, if you want to talk it through.”

“My parents loaned my aunt a lot of money.”

“What constitutes a lot?”

“Tens of thousands over the past decade and a half. And that’s just based on the documents in one folder. I have no idea if there’s more that’s unaccounted for.” I rub my temple, the dull throb telling me a headache is on the way.

“I can come over.” There’s a short pause. “If you want help going through what you found. Or it can wait. I can shift my appointments around tomorrow morning, unless now is better.”

“Now is better.”

“I can be there in fifteen.”

“Okay.”

While I wait for her to arrive, I rifle through my parents’ filing cabinets. At the back of one I find a thick folder with Linda’s name on it, but before I can open it, Kailyn texts to signal her arrival. I find her on my front porch in a pair of black leggings and a ratty It’s My Life hoodie, hair in a messy knot on top of her head, wearing her glasses, holding two takeout bags and a tray with coffees.

She smiles a little uncertainly. “I brought fuel.”

“Good thinking.” I take the coffees from her and step aside. “Come in.”

We stand there for a protracted moment, staring at each other. Neither of us certain what to say, maybe. Tension lingers between us; unanswered questions hang in the air like thick fog. I’ve missed her, more than I wanted to admit.

“Want to show me what you found?” Kailyn asks.

“Yeah, follow me.” I incline my head toward the office.

“Oh, wow,” she murmurs as she takes in the papers lining the desk; the endless loan documents, the emails she printed out from the boarding school. She raps on the desk with her long, polished fingernails.

“And I just stumbled across this right before you got here, but I haven’t had a chance to look through it.” I offer her a chair and we pull up close to the desk as I flip the thick file folder open. Inside are printed copies of the loan documents, bank statements from my aunt with maxed-out lines of credits, credit cards with outrageous balances, and agreements between her and my parents that she would pay back the money.

I rub my temple as all the pieces finally click into place. “She has a gambling problem.”

Kailyn stops biting the end of her pen so she can respond. “I was about to say the same thing. It would explain the trip to Vegas and the comment about doubling what they lost last time.”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Now I know why she’s so desperate to make me into some kind of villain and take custody of Emme.” I motion to the sea of papers spread out before us, still reeling. “This proves Linda’s intentions were purely selfish. She planted a bottle of vodka on a thirteen-year-old for Chrissake.”