Chapter 4

Three days later, my account manager at the bank called.

"Ms. Fox, your one-hundred-eighty-thousand-dollar credit loan is coming due soon."

I never applied for that money.

Right there on the phone, I demanded the bank pull the contract and the review file.

The application had gone through three months ago.

The signature on the contract copied my handwriting.

The facial-recognition verification video had been shot on a night I'd come home to sleep.

The bank's backend logs showed the login device belonged to Stanley.

My mother had taken my phone while I slept, then followed Stanley's instructions to complete the face scan.

Once the one hundred eighty thousand cleared, it went straight into my mother's account.

Eighty thousand to Trudy's father, for a new car.

Sixty thousand toward the down payment on the joint-degree international program.

The remaining forty thousand withdrawn as cash in two pulls.

I printed everything out and went home.

My mother and Stanley were wrapping dinner rolls.

Trudy stood there with her phone, showing my mother how to adjust the beauty filter.

I set the loan contract on the table.

My mother barely glanced at it.

"You want to call the police on your own brother?"

"Who wrote the signature?"

Stanley washed the flour off his hands.

"I did."

"The family's money is coming to me sooner or later. So I used a little early. What's the problem?"

I pointed at the contract.

"That's my name."

"And my credit."

He lifted his chin.

"I'll be the one taking care of you when you're old."

"I spend a little of your money and now you're keeping accounts against me?"

My mother got to her feet too.

"You should be grateful your brother's willing to look after you at all."

"A woman like you, one who only cares about money, you'll be old with nobody to put a hot meal in front of you."

I asked her why she'd torn up my acceptance letter thirteen years ago.

She threw the dough wrapper back into the bowl.

"What good would school have done you?"

"A girl marries off in the end. Paying for you would've just been throwing money into somebody else's household."

"Sending you out to work was saving you. And saving this family."

"Without Stanley, who would you even be earning all that money for?"

Trudy came over and wrapped her arms around my leg.

"Sis, don't ruin Stanley."

"He just got into college. A record like this and he's finished."

I lifted her hand off me.

"That one hundred eighty thousand. Are you paying it back?"

She retreated behind Stanley.

Nobody spoke.

I gathered up the contract.

"Fine."

"I won't call the police."

My mother let out a long breath and immediately pushed the plate of dinner rolls toward me.

"Now you're being sensible."

"Shut the door on a family and there's nothing that can't be worked out."

I ate three of the rolls.

When I finished, I washed my own bowl.

At four in the morning, I left, dragging two suitcases.

I left the house key on the shoe cabinet.

Taped to the refrigerator were the month's water, power, and gas bills.

That final charge, I'd already paid in full.

At the long-distance bus station, I sent the digital files to my lawyer.

Then I bought a ticket to the city.