Everyone in My Family Remembered What I Did, Except Me Chapter 10

Everyone in My Family Remembered What I Did, Except Me Chapter 10

So the food money climbed to $5,000 a month.

They wanted to make sure I’d never go back and check the numbers.

So they set me up during a stretch when work had me buried.

They told me a friend’s son needed to hit a sales quota, and they talked me into opening a bank

account.

That account became the tool they used to move my money out from under,me.

Every time Sylvia transferred the food money in, Monica’s younger sister, Nina Quinn, who lived in my city, pulled it back out.

Then she sent it on to Monica.

I had sweated for every dollar of it and thought I was giving it to my parents.

All of it had gone straight into Monica’s prenatal care.

I dropped down onto the couch and looked at my parents with red eyes.

“Why would you do this to me?”

“You went hungry so you could bankroll Simon and his girlfriend.”

“If you wanted money, why not say so? What was the point of building all of this?”

But instead of answering, Gordon got strangely furious.

He shot to his feet and started shouting over me.

“You’ve got some nerve asking us that. This is on you for refusing to help your brother!”

“Three years back, right after your promotion, we asked you to get him into your company and you wouldn’t do it!”

“You wouldn’t do us a favor that small, so why would we expect you to hand over money willingly?”

I froze, because I remembered that.

It had been three years ago.

They’d wanted me to get Simon, who never went past high school, into my company and into a

cushy position at that.

That was never going to happen.

What I hadn’t expected was that they’d hold a grudge like this.

While I was thinking about it, Sylvia laid into me too.

“Monica is carrying this family’s grandchild!”

“How is it wrong for your money to go to her?”

“That baby is your family. What exactly do you have to complain about?”

That was when I couldn’t hold back a laugh.

I glanced at Simon, whose face was already swollen and bruised.

“Do the two of you honestly believe that baby is his?”

I pulled out my phone, called Alan, and put him on speaker.

He laid out exactly who Monica was.

Simon had met her when he went in for a physical at her hospital.

At the time, he was spending the money our parents gave him and dressing like he had money of his

own.

Monica took him for a rich kid and set her sights on him.

Then, with the access her job gave her, she got hold of his results.

She found out Simon was infertile.

She used her position to bury it and wrote up a fake report.

After a year together, she decided a pregnancy would lock down her meal ticket.

She needed to get pregnant.

She slept with more than one man, and eventually it worked.

“That’s not possible. None of that is true.”

“You’re all lying. Monica isn’t like that.”

Simon wrenched himself out of the grip of the men holding him.

He tore out of the apartment like something had snapped in him.

I knew where he was going. He was going to confront her.

I looked at Ray and signaled him to let my parents go.

The two of them stared at us, still shaking, and finally got a few words out.

“Weren’t they here to collect on a debt?”

“Pay them and get out of this house. Don’t ever come back.”

I laughed out loud.

I told them Ray was my boss, and he’d come to help me run a scene.

The whole thing had been planned in advance.

The point of it was to make my parents say out loud that there was never anything wrong with me.

Gordon exploded and called me an ungrateful daughter.

Sylvia slammed both hands on the table and screamed that she’d raised an ingrate.

I watched both of them without moving.

When they’d worn themselves out yelling, I spoke again.

“You worked an angle on me for years so you could funnel my money to Simon. Wasn’t lying enough for you?”

“I thought you just played favorites. I never thought you’d actually try to hurt me.”

I dropped the pill box Monica had given me on the table.

Both of them looked away fast.

“So you know what this is.”

I’d mailed a few of those pills to Alan.

The lab came back and said they were psychiatric medication.

“Stealing my money wasn’t enough. You wanted everything in my name too?”

“Enough of this in a healthy person and she ends up unable to think straight.”

“Mom, Dad, that’s cold.”

With me pushing that hard, Gordon started shouting.

He said he gave me life and raised me, so he could do whatever he wanted with me.

He said that as the daughter, I owed everything I had to Simon, the son who carried on the family

name.

“If it weren’t for that, why would we have paid for your college?”

“We should have married you off young and gotten something back for you.”

I’d stopped expecting anything from them a long time ago.

I told them calmly that I’d be going to the police, and that everyone involved would answer for it.

My parents were winding up to scream at me again.

Then Gordon’s phone rang.

“Is this Simon Shaw’s family? You need to come to the hospital. There’s been an incident.”

In the hospital corridor, my parent’s wailed.

Simon had reached the hospital and gotten into a physical fight with Monica over the baby.

The two of them went down a staircase together.

Monica miscarried and hemorrhaged, and Simon was badly injured.

Even so, I had no intention of letting either of them walk.

Two months later, the court handed down its rulings.

Monica got three years for prescription fraud and for falsifying medical records.

Simon got seven for aggravated assault.

Nina got a year and two months for theft.

As for my parents, I gave them one last choice.

Either I took them to court, or they signed a settlement agreement. I gave them $20,000 as a final settlement. After that, we were done.

They took the second option without hesitating.

Once the dust had settled, my company happened to be opening an overseas division.

I was picked for the posting, and I went up from there.

That was where my new life started.