“Tilly, baby, you’re home early.”
Tilly glanced across at the clock on the bedside table. “It’s almost six.” If anything, she was late.
“It is?” Her mother looked at the clock. “It is! Gosh, time got away from me. I should start dinner.”
She started across the room, but Tilly stepped in front of her, gently wrapping her fingers around her mother’s arm. “Mom, talk to me. What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Her mother never cried. Not when they’d lost family pets. Not when Tilly had gotten pneumonia and been rushed to the hospital.
Her mom shook her head. “Let’s eat first.”
“No. I can see something’s very wrong. Please tell me.”
New tears sprang to her mother’s pale green eyes. She took a quick breath before whispering, “He’s gone.”
Tilly’s heart thudded, a chill sweeping over her skin. “Who’s gone?” Even though she asked the question, a part of her knew. The missing car, the quiet house…
“Your father. I, um…I got home, and all his things were gone. His car, everything from the safe…even my jewelry.”
Tilly was shaking her head before her mother had finished speaking. “No. That’s…why would he empty the safe and take your jewelry?” Her father was an absentee dad and husband, and a workaholic, sure, but he would never take everything they had and desert them. He would never steal from her mother.
“He left a note.” Her mother’s fingers trembled as she lifted a small piece of paper off the bed and handed it to Tilly.
“I’m sorry,” Tilly read, her gaze running over the two words again and again.
“He also emptied our shared bank account,” her mother continued.
Tilly looked up to see pain on her mother’s face. Not just pain. Agony. And heartache…so much heartache.
Her mother had always loved her father more than he’d loved her. It was something Tilly had come to recognize very early on in her life.
But this?
“Mom…this doesn’t make sense.”
Her mother swallowed, her head lowering. “Your father has always had this…unhealthy obsession with money. He came from a very poor upbringing. I assumed we were doing well enough. That we were happy. But if he’s stolen from us, I think…I fear he might have taken money from other people as well.”
Her heart gave a little twist. “What are you talking about?”
“A lot of people in this town have trusted your dad with their money. If he’s gone…”
When her mother couldn’t finish the sentence, Tilly put the pieces together. “You think he took their money and ran.”
“Oh God.” Her mother’s chest heaved too quickly, panic tugging and pulling at her face. “What will we tell people? How will we tell them he’s gone? That their money is gone?”
“Mom, it’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not. If he’s done what I think he’s done, nothing will be okay!” Suddenly, her mother’s knees gave way. Tilly only just caught her. Both of them slid to the floor.
Her mother’s pain was loud and heartbreaking. Tilly just held her, listening to the woman who’d never cried a tear in front of her as she wept…all the while thinking if this was true, if her father really had done what her mother suspected, then everything was about to change.
Tilly’s eyes shot open,her heart still pounding and her lungs panting too quickly.
A dream. It was just a dream.
But it wasn’t. It was a memory.
Her gaze shifted to the spot on the floor where she’d held her crying mother. It was right here in this room, beside the bed, and even though it was years ago, it may as well have been yesterday, she remembered it so well. The pain. The heartache. And the hurt that her father had inflicted.
