His mouth opened.
He set it down.
“Darla, what is this?”
Darla did not answer. She crossed her arms and looked at the gravel.
“Darla, answer me. What is this?”
“It is not what it looks like,” Darla said. “The charges were for the renovation. I was helping.”
“Helping?”
I stood up from the chair.
“You charged $1,200 for a caterer to help with my renovation. You booked a DJ for $600 to help me sand floors?”
Darla’s mouth closed.
Walt looked at the credit card statement again. Then at Darla, then at me.
“There is an explanation for this,” Walt said.
“There is,” I said, “and I am going to give it to you.”
I spoke.
Darla booked a caterer for $1,200 on my credit card without my permission. A DJ for $600, a tent rental for $800, that is 2,600 vendor deposits charged to my name.
She also spent 3,200 on what she called renovation supplies over the last 2 months. Those were not renovation supplies. Those were decorations, a portable bar, and catering platters for the parties she has been hosting here on weekends, charging her friends $30 to $50 a night for access to a cabin she does not own, did not build, and cannot unlock without a key I gave her.
60 people paid her $40 each for tonight.
That is $2,400 in her pocket for selling my property.
I filed a dispute with the card company at 11:40 last night. There is no party. There is a locked cabin with one name on the deed and a driveway full of people who paid your daughter for something she never had the right to sell.
Irene’s hand went to her mouth.
Darla took a step backward.
“It is just a party,” She Darla said. “You are blowing this out of proportion.”
My jaw tightened.
That was the one crack. The only one.
“You said I have a carpenters’s pencil and a bucket of wood stain,” I said to Walt. “That marked every cut on every board your daughter is standing on. That stain is on every railing. She charged her friends $40 to lean against. Those tools built this cabin from a shell that smelled like raccoon and had no hot water. Her degree did not hammer a single nail.”
Walt’s right hand reached behind him for the truck hood.
His fingers spread and his knuckles went white, steadying weight that used to hold itself. His jaw worked sideways, mouth opening and closing and opening again, but nothing came out.
His left foot stepped back and his heel caught the gravel, and he stumbled half an inch and caught himself on the side mirror.
His eyes tracked from the deed on the table to my face to the padlocked cabin door. They moved in a triangle and did not settle.
Walt reached for his back pocket.
He pulled out a checkbook.
“I will write you a check right now. $5,000. Just let her have the party. One afternoon, she $5,000. That is more than fair.”
I picked up the credit card statement from the folding table, held it at arms length so he could read it.
$5,800 in unauthorized charges. My name at the top. Darla’s purchases listed line by line. caterer, DJ, tent, decorations, portable bar, catering platters, string lights.
“This is what your daughter charged to my name. The bank reversed it at midnight. You knew about it. The text says, ‘Dad said she would not check until the statement.’”
I set the paper back on the table.
“5,000 does not cover what she took, and it does not cover what you helped her take.”
Walt put the checkbook away. His hand was shaking when he slid it back into his pocket.
“You gave her my cabin for a party. She sold 60 tickets to a house I built with my hands. The deed has one name.”
Headlights on the gravel.
Kai’s car pulled in behind Walt’s truck.