Chapter 4 - The Audit
Three days later, the fallout hit my office above the bakery. I was knee-deep in quarterly tax reconciliations for a local hardware store when the heavy wooden door downstairs swung open, followed by the aggressive, rapid-fire clacking of heels on the staircase.
It wasn't Drew. It was my mother, accompanied by my uncle Arthur—not the venue manager Arthur, but our wealthy maternal uncle Arthur from Manhattan, who rarely spoke to our side of the family because he despised my mother’s financial recklessness.
“Margaret!” my mother marched into my office, her face contorted in absolute fury. She slammed her cane against my linoleum floor. “What is this nonsense I am hearing from Drew? She says her bank accounts are frozen, her kids were nearly expelled from St. Catherine’s this morning, and you have cut off all family support without so much as a warning!”
Uncle Arthur followed her slowly, his hands tucked into the pockets of a tailored camel-hair overcoat. He looked around my modest office, taking in the towers of ledger books, the second-hand desk, and the framed photo of Theo and me at Coney Island. He didn't look angry; he looked intrigued.
“Sit down, Helen,” Uncle Arthur said quietly to my mother, gesturing to the two plastic chairs in front of my desk. He turned his sharp, intelligent eyes to me. “Hello, Maggie. It’s been a while. Care to explain what kind of financial earthquake you’ve triggered? Drew called me crying hysterically this morning claiming she’s homeless because her monthly allowance stopped.”
I didn't flinch. I closed my laptop, leaned back in my squeaky office chair, and looked straight at my uncle.
“Allowance, Uncle Arthur? You call five thousand three hundred fifty dollars a month an allowance?” I asked, my voice completely devoid of emotion. I unlocked my computer again, pulled up the master spreadsheet, and spun the monitor around so it faced them. “For six years, I have paid Drew’s mortgage, her kids’ private school tuition, her car notes, her country club dues, and her credit card bills. Totaling over three thousand dollars a month out of my own pocket, while my bookkeeping business barely cleared enough for Theo and me to live on. On Saturday, during Theo’s birthday party, her son Cody destroyed my son’s cake on purpose because Drew promised him an iPhone if he did it and made me laugh.”
Uncle Arthur stepped forward. He put on his reading glasses, leaned over my desk, and scrolled slowly through the spreadsheet. His eyes widened line by line. He saw the dates, the amounts, the memo lines marked ‘Drew’s car insurance’, ‘Drew’s boutique shopping spree’, ‘Drew’s weekend getaway to the Hamptons’.
“Good lord,” Uncle Arthur muttered under his breath. He turned to my mother, his expression turning icy. “Helen. Did you know about this?”
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My mother squirmed in her seat, wringing her hands. “Well… Drew needed help! She has three children to raise in a good neighborhood! Maggie has always been good with numbers, she makes extra money—”
“Maggie has been working sixty-hour weeks while you people treated her like an ATM machine,” Uncle Arthur interrupted, his voice dropping into a dangerous register. He looked back at me, a slow, approving smile spreading across his weathered face. “Well, Maggie. I must say. I always knew you were the only sane person in this family. Tell me… what do you need to completely sever their financial umbilical cord legally?”
