Behind him, the hooded woman finally started to turn.
The hood slipped back, and my knees almost gave out!
It wasn’t a woman I’d never seen before. It was Sally, my sister-in-law (SIL)!
“Sally?”
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She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Her mascara had run in two black lines down her cheeks, and her hands were shaking.
The hood slipped back.
“Nala, please,” Carter said. His phone tumbled from his hoodie pocket into the wet grass, and he didn’t stoop to pick it up. “Come inside. You’ll wake Noah.”
“Our son is the reason I’m out here!”
“Please…”
I marched past both of them, bent down, and grabbed a corner of the muddy suitcase.
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I managed to drag it out of the hole.
He didn’t stoop to pick it up.
Then I pulled it toward the porch light.
Neither of them said anything nor tried to stop me.
***
In the kitchen, I dropped the suitcase onto the tile with a wet thud.
Carter and Sally had followed me inside.
“Open it. Now.”
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My husband stared at me.
I dropped the suitcase.
“Nala, if you’ll just let me…”
“Open it, Carter!”
He knelt and unzipped it. I braced myself for perfume, another woman’s clothes, or something I could name and hate.
But what I saw was cash!
There were also several bank envelopes, cashier’s checks, and a thick folder containing what appeared to be legal paperwork. Partially sticking out from beneath them was a sealed envelope with my MIL’s handwriting on the front.
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What I saw was cash!
“An affair I could’ve understood,” I said quietly. “This is worse. What are you doing with so much money?”
“It isn’t our money,” Sally whispered from the doorway.
“Excuse me?”
She sat down on the kitchen floor, right there in her muddy boots, and pulled her knees up.
“It’s mine. Mom’s inheritance. Carter’s been trying to help me pull it back together.”
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“Pull it back from whom?”
“This is worse.”
My SIL’s eyes flicked to Carter. He shook his head.
“Not yet, Sal. Please let her read what’s in the envelope first,” my husband said to his sister.
“Makes no difference,” she told him, then turned back to me. “My lawyer warned me Friday that once the banks opened this morning, she could move everything before we had time to stop her. I withdrew what I legally could over the weekend and kept the paperwork with it until the court could freeze the accounts.”
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“Makes no difference.”
“Somebody in this family pressured me into signing papers I didn’t understand,” Sally continued. “Months ago. Carter figured it out recently. He’s been trying to fix it without you getting dragged into an ugly fight.”
“Who pressured you?”
She wouldn’t say. Neither would Carter.
“She’s been circling all weekend,” Sally added. “Something has to be filed by morning. Today is the last window I have.”
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I looked at Carter, my calm, careful husband, standing with dirt on his forearms.
“Carter figured it out.”
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