Chapter 6 - The Midnight Call
At 9:45 PM that evening, my phone began to buzz against my nightstand.
I was lying in bed reading a bedtime story to Sophie. The room was illuminated by a soft, warm nightlight shaped like a star. Sophie was already half-asleep, her head resting heavy against my shoulder, breathing in slow, rhythmic sighs.
I looked at the caller ID: **DAD.**
I silenced the ringer. I finished the chapter, kissed Sophie’s forehead, pulled the unicorn blanket up to her chin, and quietly stepped out of the room, closing the door behind me.
By the time I reached the kitchen, Robert had called four more times. Then came a string of text messages, sent in rapid succession:
*NATALIE ANSWER THE PHONE.*
*WHAT DID YOU DO???*
*ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!*
*CALL ME RIGHT NOW BEFORE I COME TO YOUR APARTMENT!*
I made myself a mug of chamomile tea. I sat down on the sofa, put my slippers on, and tapped the call button.
Robert answered on the first half of the first ring.
"NATALIE!" His voice came through the speaker in a high-pitched, ragged scream that didn't sound like him at all. "What the hell is this?! What did Arthur send to my house today?! Did you lose your goddamn mind?!"
"Good evening, Robert," I said evenly.
"Don't you 'good evening' me! Denise has been crying for five hours! Her entire garden club saw a process server throw papers on our dining table! She threw up twice! Do you have any idea the humiliation you just caused this family?!"
"You don't have a family, Robert," I said quietly. "You have a wife who hates your granddaughter, and a granddaughter whose birthday you helped destroy."
"THIS IS ABOUT A CAKE?!" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "You are trying to evict your own father over a hundred-dollar bakery cake?! Are you insane?! I am your father! I gave you life! I raised you in this house!"
"My mother raised me in that house," I corrected him, each word deliberate and sharp. "With her money. Under her trust. A trust that you signed, Robert. A trust that you thought you could pretend didn't exist while you tried to forge my name to take out a quarter-million-dollar equity loan."
The line went dead silent.
The hysterical screaming stopped instantly. All that was left on the other end of the line was the sound of Robert’s shallow, panicked breathing.
"You... you knew about that?" he whispered.
"The bank called me four hours after you submitted the forged resolution, Dad," I said, using the word *Dad* with all the cold irony it deserved. "They asked if I had approved a subordinate mortgage for Denise Harper. I told them I had never seen the paperwork. Arthur has the original loan application, Dad. He has Denise's signature as guarantor. He has your forged signature as trustee."
"Natalie... please," Robert stammered, all the bravado evaporating from his voice, replaced by raw, sniveling terror. "Denise... Denise was under so much stress. Mason’s tuition was due, and her business had some setbacks, and she said we could just borrow against the equity and pay it back before you ever found out. She told me you would never check! She said the trust was old, that no one paid attention to those old files!"
"And you believed her?"
"Natalie, she's my wife!"
"And Sophie is your granddaughter!" I snapped, my voice finally rising, hitting him with the force of five years of swallowed humiliation. "She is seven years old, Robert! She spent three weeks making a banner for you! I skipped buying new shoes for work so I could buy her a cake she would remember forever! And you stood there—in my mother's kitchen, on floors my mother paid for—and you laughed while that vile woman threw it in the trash!"
"I was just... I was trying to keep the peace!" he sobbed. "You know how Denise gets! If I didn't laugh, she would have turned on me! She would have made my life hell for weeks!"
"Well," I said, "now she gets to make your life hell somewhere else."
"You can't do this to me," Robert pleaded. "Where am I supposed to go? Natalie, I don't have any savings! Denise spent everything on the renovations and the lease for her Porsche! I don't have the money for first and last month’s rent on an apartment! I'm sixty-two years old!"
"You should have thought about that before you pulled out your phone to record my daughter crying," I told him. "You have twenty-nine days, Robert. Arthur has instructed the moving company and the sheriff’s department. On June 15th at 9:00 AM, the locks will be changed. If you are inside that house, you will be escorted off the property in handcuffs."
"Natalie, wait! Please! Let me talk to Sophie! Let me apologize to Sophie!"
"You will never speak to Sophie again," I said.
May you like
And then I hung up.
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