Chapter 3
I drove home,
walked straight into my office,
and opened the bottom drawer of my desk.
The brown folder was exactly
where I had left it.
Purchase agreement.
Valuation documents.
Attorney correspondence.
Closing statement.
My signature sat neatly
at the bottom of the final page.
I placed everything on the kitchen table,
then opened fifteen years
of my own financial records
on my laptop.
Farm equipment.
Seed.
Property taxes.
Insurance.
Repairs.
Every major expense had come from me.
There wasn’t one payment from Ranata.
Not one transfer from my parents.
Not one mysterious family rescue.
I sat there staring at the screen
until another thought occurred to me.
If my parents believed
they had been sending money
to help me…
where had it actually been going?
At 7:12 that evening,
Mom called.
Her voice sounded different.
“Fay, can you come over?”
I looked at the brown folder.
“Is Ranata there?”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
This time I heard Dad speaking
somewhere behind her.
Mom lowered her voice.
“We found some records.”
Twenty minutes later,
I pulled into the driveway
for the second time that day.
Every light in the house was on now.
When I entered the kitchen,
nobody said hello.
Dad sat at the head of the table
with several pages arranged in front of him.
Mom’s hands were wrapped
around a coffee mug
she wasn’t drinking from.
Ranata sat across from them,
staring at the kitchen island.
Her husband, Desmond,
stood near the sink.
He kept looking at the papers.
Dad finally lifted his eyes to me.
“Fay, I need you to answer something.”
I pulled out a chair.
“Okay.”
He placed one finger on the first page.
“Did Ranata ever give you money from us?”
Ranata looked at me immediately.
For the first time in years,
she wasn’t smiling.
“No,” I said.
Mom slowly lowered her mug.
Dad pushed the papers across the table.
There were dates.
Amounts.
Transfers.
And beside each one was a short explanation.
Farm expense.
Equipment repair.
Utility assistance.
Temporary support for Fay.
I read the first page.
Then the second.
Then I noticed the total at the bottom.
Nobody spoke.
Finally,
Dad looked at the brown folder
I had brought in
and placed beside my chair.
“What’s in there?”.
I rested my palm on the folder.
For a moment,
I considered giving him the easy answer.
Business documents.
Farm paperwork.