Chapter 10 - MY SON'S WORDS
The message was almost fourteen months old.
I recognized Harrison’s profile picture before I read a word.
Mom has plenty. She barely spends anything. Let me handle her.
Below that, another message.
She won't want us paying rent. We can stay longer if we need to.
And then the sentence that made the kitchen seem to tilt.
After Dad, she needs me more than she needs the money.
I read it twice.
Harrison reached for the laptop.
Sloan pulled it back.
“Tell her,” she said.
“Tell her who said it would be easy.”
“Easy?” I asked.
“Mom, I was talking big.”
“About making a fool of me?”
“No.”
“About how lonely I was?”
His face crumpled.
It did not make the words disappear.
For months, I had told myself Sloan had changed him.
It was a softer story.
In that story, the little boy I raised was still somewhere untouched, waiting for me to rescue him from a bad marriage.
The laptop took that story away.
“You both need to leave this room,” I said.
Sloan shut the computer.
“I just wanted you to know.”
“You wanted to hurt him. You used me to do it.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
When they were gone, I called Elaine and asked for the next available appointment.
My voice sounded calm.
It scared me more than crying had.
The following morning, I made a report and gave the investigator the records I had gathered.
I answered questions about the access I had granted, the purchases I had approved, and the ones I had not.
I described the handbag honestly, too.
There was no instant arrest.
No promise that everything would come back.
Just careful questions, copies, and a case number written on a card.
Elaine helped arrange formal notice for Harrison and Sloan to move out.
I kept following the process even when I wanted their suitcases gone that night.
When Harrison received the notice, he stood in the doorway with it hanging at his side.
“If this costs me my job, I can’t pay you back.”
“You should talk to your own attorney.”
“I’m talking to my mother.”
“You had a year to talk to her.”
He looked toward the stairs.
May you like
Then he said something that stopped me cold.
“Sloan wants me to say you gave us all of it.”
