Chapter 4
“Hi, Mom.”
“Meredith?” Her voice was tense, the breezy tone she usually used when talking about golf and desert sun completely absent. “What on earth is happening in Minneapolis? Andrew called me twenty minutes ago from his balcony in the middle of a blizzard, practically hysterical. He said you cut off their bank accounts. He said you’re evicting them. He said you’re trying to destroy his family over a petty slight at the door.”
I leaned back against the cushions and closed my eyes. “Did he tell you why he called me petty, Mom?”
“He said you had a disagreement about the gala! He said it was a private corporate event and you overreacted because you weren't on the VIP list!” She sighed, the deep, reflexive sigh of a mother who had spent forty years smoothing over Andrew’s sharp corners. “Meredith, you know how stressful his work is. He’s carrying the weight of a major firm. Why would you pull a stunt like this right before Christmas? Call this lawyer of yours and fix it. We don't air our family grievances through banks.”
“Mom,” I said, keeping my voice deliberate. “Who do you think has been paying Andrew’s bills for the past three years?”
“What are you talking about? Andrew has an institutional investor. He secured a partnership after his firm hit a rough patch.”
“I am the investor, Mom. There is no firm partnership. There never was.”
The line went completely dead for five seconds. In the background, I could hear the faint sound of an Arizona television running a holiday commercial.
“What?” she whispered.
“Three years ago, Andrew came to my house in tears,” I said, every word measured and clear. “He had two weeks of payroll left. He was sixty days away from defaulting on his mortgage. He begged me for a bridge loan so Celeste wouldn't find out he had mismanaged his firm. I didn't want him to feel small, so I set up a private trust through Gregory Shaw to cover their housing, their transportation, their business overhead, and Maisie and Poppy’s private school tuition. I have put nearly seven hundred thousand dollars into that trust over thirty-six months.”
“Seven hundred... Meredith, that's impossible. Where would you get that kind of money?”
A bitter, quiet laugh escaped my throat before I could stop it. “Because RouteSpring isn't a little software startup anymore, Mom. We have forty-eight employees. We process logistics for sixty percent of the medical distributors in the Upper Midwest. I make a very good living. I just don't wear it on my wrist.”