Dad looked directly at his wife. His voice remained quiet, but every word carried the weight of his disappointment.
“You knew what he did,” he said. “You watched him take the money, and then you chose my granddaughter to take the blame. You humiliated her in front of her mother, on Christmas Eve.”
Darlene immediately started crying. She claimed Troy was sick and needed help. She begged Dad to understand that exposing the thefts and missing medication could ruin her son’s life.
But Dad had already seen everything.
“I have eight months of recordings,” he replied. “I know about the money. I know about the pills. I also know about the three times you went downstairs after something disappeared and came back telling me I’d misplaced it.”
Troy stood motionless near the basement door, his hands buried in his hoodie. Dad finally turned toward him, and his expression softened slightly.
“Troy, empty your pocket, son.”
For several seconds, nobody moved. Then Troy slowly reached inside his hoodie, pulled out the folded bills, and placed them on the coffee table beside Paige’s library books.
Two thousand dollars.
THE STORY CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE… 👇👇👇
