Chapter 10 - THE QUESTION
Dad remembered the conversation immediately.
“Preston showed me projections,” he said.
We sat at my parents’ kitchen table again.
The same table where I had done homework as a teenager.
“What did you ask him?”
“Who owned the property.”
“That’s it?”
“That was enough.”
Dad folded his hands.
“The documents referenced a development company. I searched it. It had been formed less than three months earlier.”
I stared at him.
“You investigated?”
“I read public records.”
Of course he did.
My father had always taught me one thing.
Never sign what you haven’t read.
Never trust urgency.
Never confuse someone’s confidence with evidence.
“I asked Preston who controlled the company,” Dad continued. “He got defensive.”
“And then?”
“He told me I was embarrassing him.”
I laughed softly.
There was that word.
Embarrassing.
Preston’s greatest fear.
Not failure.
Exposure.
Two days later, company investigators interviewed me.
I told the truth.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
I had never approved Northline.
Never participated in the investment.
Never signed the acknowledgment page.
When I finished, Laura walked me to the elevator.
“I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
“I believed Preston when he said you were unstable.”
I stopped.
“He said what?”
Laura winced.
“He told people your parents controlled you. That you panicked over money. That you sometimes misunderstood normal business decisions.”
I felt my face go cold.
He had been building a version of me at work.
Fragile Abigail.
Dependent Abigail.
Confused Abigail.
A woman whose word could be dismissed before she ever spoke.
Laura continued.
“I should have questioned it.”
“Yes,” I said.
She nodded.
“You should have.”
The elevator doors opened.
Before I stepped inside, she said, “For what it’s worth, nobody believes him now.”
That should have felt like victory.
It didn’t.
It felt like seventeen years had been stolen one inch at a time.
That evening, Preston was waiting outside my apartment building.
I stopped ten feet away.
“You can’t be here.”
“I need five minutes.”
“No.”
“Abby, please.”
I almost walked past him.
Then I saw his face.
No smugness.
No performance.
For once, he looked tired.
“I loved you,” he said.
I stared at him.
“Don’t.”
“I did.”
“You loved being believed.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s not fair.”
I laughed.
“You forged my name.”
“I protected us.”
“You lost money.”
“I was going to fix it.”
“With stolen company money?”
His eyes flashed.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
There he was.
The old Preston.
I stepped closer.
“Why did you spend seventeen years trying to make me ashamed of my parents?”
He opened his mouth.
I didn’t let him escape.
“Tell me.”
Silence.
“Tell me the truth one time.”
His shoulders dropped.
And when he finally answered, his voice was almost calm.
“Because every time you talked to them, you came back asking questions.”
I stared at him.
May you like
Preston looked me directly in the eyes.
“And you were easier to live with before you started asking questions.”
