“And your sister?”
“Monica ran the administrative side. Payroll. Billing. Vendor payments. She’s three years younger than me. She was working at a bank when I started the company. I hired her when we got big enough to
need someone full-time on the books.” I stirred my soup. “I trusted them both. Completely. I never once thought I needed to check.”
Then I told her about Loretta.
Loretta was Trevor’s mother. She was a retired school librarian, kind and funny, with a laugh that sounded like a hiccup. She’d never had a daughter, and she treated me like one from the very first
day.
In the spring of 2021, she got sick. Ovarian cancer. Trevor’s father had been dead for years, and Trevor said he couldn’t handle hospitals. They made him panic. So I went. I drove her to every appointment. Every scan. Every chemotherapy session. I slept in the chair next to her bed when she had surgery.
