“Stan told me it was my mother’s ring when he gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday. It was supposed to be…precious.” Her voice broke on the last word, but she shook her head, pressing her lips together. She refused to cry. “I thought it was old. And…hers. Not some piece of gold he’d picked up at a jewelry store. Using cash.”
“You still don’t know that,” he said.
She stared at him until he waved a hand, conceding.
“Okay, you suspect. But it still might have been hers. Even if he lied about some things, he might have been telling the truth about the ring.”
Mick offered a hopeful smile. He wanted it to have belonged to her mother as much as she did, and she loved—noappreciated—him so much for that.
He studied the ring in his palm and then pointed to it with his opposite hand. “Mind if I put this somewhere for safekeeping.”
“Do whatever you want with it.” She waved it away, sure she would never be able to wear it again. It might not have been hot, but she suspected he’d purchased it with dirty money. That felt like the same thing. If Mick left the ring with her, she would probably chuck it in the garbage.
He stowed it in the inside zipper pocket of his coat before turning back to her. “Is there anything else you remember? Besides the ring.”
“Not that I can think—” She stopped herself, recalling a big item in both size and price tag. “Well, the garage.”
“That did look newer than the rest of the house. And the heaters are nice.”
Their gazes flicked to each other’s and then away.
“Riley’s basketball court, too. Those were built at about the same time. I remember the cement contractor saying how unusual it was for someone to pay with that much cash.”
“How long ago was that?”
She thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, Riley was about fourteen. And he’s twenty-seven now. You do the math.”
“Man, you two are young to have survived so much.”
“We were on the accelerated program, I guess. But we’d be happy to quit. Anyway, I don’t feel young.”
“I can imagine.”
“Your life hasn’t been exactly pain-free, either, you know,” she said.
Mick tapped his finger on each pile of papers. “That’s true, but this isn’t my turn. We’ll worry about my messed-up life another day.”
“Since it’smy day—in bonus hours since my phone says it’s Monday—I just thought of something else. Stan paid my college tuition after I had the girls. That I can’t give back.”
They exchanged a look that told her he understood just how hard that was for her.
“How did he even manage it? Walk into the bursar’s office with a briefcase full of cash?”
Even as awful as the situation seemed, she couldn’t help but smile at that image. “Nothing quite that drug-deal-like. He took out a loan against his retirement account. I tried to talk him out of it. Told him I knew he couldn’t afford it and was grateful for the help he and Riley were already giving me with the twins. But he insisted.”
“So, at least that money was legitimate. He worked for it and saved.”
“Unless you consider that if he’d figured out a way to pay back that loan to his account, it would have been with money that he’d effectively stolen from the village. Or that if he didn’t pay it back, he didn’t really need his retirement fund.”
“That brings us back to the earlier question. Where’s the money?” He thought about it for a few seconds and then continued. “What about when he died? If you received a big windfall from his will, that would have been obvious. So, what did you two inherit?”
“Just what was left in his retirement account and the house and property, which he owned outright. Apparently, Mom received a small inheritance after our grandparents died, so—” She sighed and covered her face with a hand so that her fingertips touched one cheekbone and her thumb stretched to the other. “What do you want to bet that my mother’s parents never left our family any money?”
“Like I’ve said before, we still don’t have all the facts. And it’s possible that your dad could have been telling the truth, at least part of the time. Like about your mother’s inheritance.”
A knot forming in her throat, Rachel nodded. Mick didn’t know how much she wanted to believe that.
“So what now?” he asked. “Where do we go from here?”
