Chapter 8 - Joanne’s Failed Guilt Trip
The evening brought an expected, but no less pathetic, maneuver: the matriarch.
Joanne had perfected the art of the Southern guilt trip over forty years of manipulating her late husband and her spineless son. She called me from a blocked number at seven o’clock while I was unpacking my groceries in the suite.
"Emma," Joanne began, her voice quivering with theatrical sorrow. "I am speaking to you as a mother. As a woman who carried Thomas in her womb."
"Good evening, Joanne."
"How can you have so much hatred in your heart?" Joanne whimpered. "We took you in. We welcomed you into our family traditions. And now you cast us out into the cold over a few misunderstandings?"
"Took me in?" I couldn't help the dry chuckle that escaped my throat. "Joanne, you live in the house I bought. You sleep on an eight-hundred-dollar orthopedic mattress I paid for. You drink imported earl grey tea that is auto-shipped on my credit card. In what universe did you take me in?"
"A family shares!" Joanne snapped, dropping the fragile grandmother act for a second before catching herself. "Thomas is your husband before God! Brenda is his sister! Where is your charity? Where is your Christian grace?"
"My grace ran out when you sat at my dinner table, watched your son demand a divorce, and told me not to 'manipulate' him when I showed you the sonogram of your first grandchild."
Joanne went silent. For a long moment, all I heard was the rattling wheeze of her breathing.
"You don't understand how things are," Joanne said, her tone hardening into venom. "Brenda had a hard life. Her ex-husband left her with nothing."
"Her ex-husband left her because she ran up fifty thousand dollars of debt in his name and hid the notices under the sofa," I countered. "Did you really think I didn't pull her background check when she moved into my house? I am an accountant, Joanne. I read balance sheets for fun."
"You wicked girl—"
"And speaking of balance sheets," I interrupted, "did you know Brenda told Thomas that you only had twenty thousand dollars left from your condo sale? Where did the other one hundred and ten thousand go, Joanne?"
A sharp gasp came through the line. "What did you say?"
"Ask your daughter where the rest of your retirement money went," I said softly. "Check her closet. Check the three storage units she rents under her maiden name. Then call me back and lecture me about family loyalty."
I hung up.
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I didn't need to be there to know what was about to happen. Brenda had thought she was playing chess against a naive pawn; she didn't realize I had already overturned the board and set fire to the pieces.
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