And she had used Travis to bully me. She had used my parents’ blind favoritism to isolate me. She had used my daughter’s sweet, innocent birthday party as a stage to assert her dominance, and when her fake, worthless status symbol got destroyed, she tried to shake me down for two thousand real dollars to line her own pockets.
“Clara,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper, but vibrating with lethal intent. “How much do I owe you for the appraisal report?”
Clara waved her hand dismissively, a wicked gleam in her sharp eyes.
“Consider it my investment in public justice, Rebecca,” she said, sliding the ruined bag back into my cooler. “Just make sure that when you drop the hammer, you swing it hard enough to shatter the whole damn house.”
The summons arrived on a Thursday afternoon, disguised as an olive branch.
My mother called my landline—the first time she had spoken to me in almost three weeks. Her voice was strained, high-pitched, and laden with the suffocating, performative sweetness she used when she wanted to manipulate me without leaving fingerprints.
“Rebecca, darling,” she breathed into the receiver. “We need to put an end to this awful, terrible feud. It’s tearing the family apart. Your father hasn’t slept, and Travis is beside himself with stress.”
I stood in my kitchen, a dish towel in hand, looking out the window at the garden bed where Sadie and I had planted winter garlic bulbs the previous autumn.
“Is Travis dropping the lawsuit?” I asked plainly.
A sharp intake of breath on the other end. “We are willing to sit down and discuss a compromise. Vanessa has agreed—out of the goodness of her heart, mind you—to let you pay off the bag in monthly installments. No interest. Just a gesture of goodwill so we can all have Thanksgiving dinner together next week as a family.”
“And Sadie?” I asked, my voice flat. “Does Vanessa plan on apologizing to Sadie for smashing her birthday cake?”
My mother let out an exasperated, theatrical groan. “Rebecca, for heaven’s sake! Still with the cake! Sadie is eight years old; she’s probably already forgotten about it! Why must you dwell on the negative? We are offering you a way back into this family. Come to our house on Sunday at two o’clock. Alone. We will sit down with Travis, Vanessa, and the mediator, sign the agreement, and put this nightmare behind us.”
“The mediator?” I repeated, my eyes narrowing.
“A family friend,” my mother said quickly. “Just someone to keep the peace. Two o’clock, Rebecca. Don’t be stubborn. Think of your daughter. If you don’t show up, Travis is filing the papers on Monday morning, and there will be no turning back.”
She hung up before I could answer.
I held the buzzing receiver for a moment, then slowly set it down in its cradle.
*A compromise.*
They didn’t want a compromise. They wanted a public surrender. They wanted me to walk into their home, bend the knee in front of Vanessa, sign an admission of guilt that legally obligated me to pay two thousand dollars for a forty-dollar counterfeit, and thank them for the privilege of eating their dry Thanksgiving turkey.
I walked over to the kitchen desk. Resting beneath a paperweight was Clara Dubois’s four-page certified appraisal report, bound in a crisp black folder, complete with high-resolution microscopic color photographs, metallurgical lab test results, and a stamped legal affidavit.
Next to it was a thick manila envelope I had received yesterday from a contact Mack had put me in touch with—a retired fraud investigator who still had friends in the Pennington County Sheriff’s Financial Crimes Unit.
I checked my watch.
Sunday, two o’clock.
“Sadie,” I called up the stairs.
“Yes, Mommy?”
“On Sunday, you’re going to spend the afternoon at Uncle Mack’s house. Mrs. Mack is going to teach you how to make authentic cinnamon rolls from scratch.”
A squeal of pure joy echoed down the staircase. “The kind with the cream cheese frosting?!”
“The exact kind,” I smiled.
Because on Sunday, I wasn’t going to a family mediation.
I was walking into an ambush. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t bringing a shield. I was bringing an anvil.
Sunday afternoon arrived under a leaden, slate-gray South Dakota sky.
The wind was howling out of the north, sweeping dead leaves across the manicured lawn of my parents’ sprawling ranch-style home in the upscale Chapel Valley neighborhood. Travis’s gleaming black Audi—the one Vanessa leased with her “boutique profits”—was parked in the driveway alongside my father’s pristine Buick.
I parked my rusted F-150 at the curb, grabbed my heavy leather work briefcase from the passenger seat, and stepped out into the biting wind.
