My Mom Hid Gold In Her Truffle Box Chapter 07

My Mom Hid Gold In Her Truffle Box Chapter 07

Mom flinched.

“I bought you clothes, cooked for you…”

“Don’t insult us with that.” I cut her off.

My hand was shaking when I pointed at the screen.

“We’re adding it all up today? Fine. Let’s start at the beginning.”

“Chloe said you gave me fifteen hundred a month for college. Right?”

I pulled up another set of screenshots and mirrored them to the TV. They were Mom’s bank statements and transfer records, every transaction from the day I started college.

“Look at this.”

“Four years of college. Mom never sent me a single cent.”

My column on the screen was empty, not one deposit, not one transfer. Chloe’s was packed with transfers.

“Start of freshman year, five thousand. Sophomore year, new phone, twelve hundred. Junior year, a trip to Europe, five thousand.”

A few hundred here, a few thousand there, on top of the five hundred that landed in Chloe’s account like clockwork every single month.

The relatives stared at the numbers scrolling down the screen. Nobody was defending Mom now.

I turned to Dad. He hadn’t said a word.

“Dad, Chloe said she got five hundred a month.”

“That was supposed to be from you, two hundred and fifty each, for Chloe and me. Wasn’t it?”

Dad flinched like I’d struck a nerve. His head snapped up, his face going dark red.

I’d caught his face earlier, when Chloe first mentioned the five hundred. Something in him had cracked.

He’d already guessed. Mom had funneled all the money to Chloe. But he’d kept his mouth shut, to protect Mom and keep the peace.

Dad wouldn’t look at me. “There… there must be some misunderstanding.”

“A misunderstanding?” My laugh came out sharp enough to hurt.

“That’s a great word for it.”

I swiped to the next screenshot.

“Chloe said Mom bought me a luxury car when I graduated.”

“Take a look at the registration.”

The name on the title wasn’t mine. It was my boss’s.

“My boss lent me that car because I was working myself to the bone in sales. It was never mine!”

“And Mom? She got me a beat-up second-hand moped. A few hundred bucks.”

“Meanwhile, Chloe’s car? Paid for with Mom’s credit card.”

The proof was right there on the screen, and there was no way left to spin it. The room was dead quiet.

My uncle stared at Mom. “Margaret, all these years, it was Chloe? Chloe was the one you favored all this time?”

“That’s not possible!” Chloe’s voice cracked on every word.

She looked like the floor had dropped out from under her.

“Mom loves Eleanor the most. She always has! She gives Eleanor everything!”

“Those records are fake. She made them up!”

Mom shrank back into the sofa like someone had cut her strings. Her face was chalk white.

“Yes.” Her voice came out raw and hollow. “I gave all the money to Chloe.”

The room erupted.

Then Mom lifted her chin. Something shifted in her eyes—not shame. Defiance.

“But everything I did was for your own good!”

“If I hadn’t pushed you, if I hadn’t forced you to fight for everything, would you be where you are now?”

“You’re an executive at your company. You think that just happened? I made you into that.”

“You should be thanking me.”

She stood up, believing every word coming out of her own mouth.

The absurdity of it hollowed me out.

“You trained me?” My teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached. The tears I’d been holding back finally won.