Car — payment/insurance.
Photo shoots.
Retreats.
Coaching.
Emergency card payments.
Wedding extras.
My eyes moved down the page.
The second section had no check marks.
Future Asks.
I stopped breathing.
The city lights outside blurred slightly through the glass.
A line near the top had been circled in red.
Ask Eve after wedding, before honeymoon if possible.
Below it were numbers.
Large numbers.
Specific numbers.
A plan.
Not a misunderstanding.
Not family needing help.
Not Madison being Madison.
A plan.
I lowered myself onto a barstool.
The robe had gone cold against my skin. Somewhere in the apartment, the air system hummed softly. My phone lit again. This time it was my mother’s name.
I looked from the phone to the printed pages.
Jessica Hart.
Collaborator.
The word seemed almost polite for what it meant.
My mother had not been smoothing things over.
She had been managing the account.
And the account was me.
I picked up the first page again, slowly, carefully, the way I would lift a document in a closing room when I already knew the mistake was fatal but wanted the other side to see it for themselves.
There was one line near the bottom I had not read yet.
One sentence that Joshua had underlined by hand.
I leaned closer.
And that was when I finally saw what they had planned to ask me for next.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.