Chapter 2 - THE GIRL IN BEATRICE’S HOUSE
Before the fire, before the scars, before people began looking at my face and deciding they knew my worth, I was Audrey Hale.
My mother used to say I had my father’s patience and her dangerous habit of remembering details.
My father died when I was twelve.
My mother died when I was seventeen.
Cancer took her slowly and left me with a scholarship letter, two suitcases, and an aunt who said all the right things at the funeral.
“Of course she’ll live with us,” Beatrice told the neighbors, pressing a tissue to her eyes. “Family takes care of family.”
The neighbors praised her.
The church ladies called her generous.
Chloe rolled her eyes behind everyone’s backs.
Beatrice’s generosity ended the moment the sympathy casseroles stopped arriving.
In her house, I became the extra pair of hands.
I woke early to pack lunches.
Cleaned after Beatrice’s event tastings.
Ironed Chloe’s blouses.
Helped unload floral arrangements from delivery vans after school.
When I got accepted into Northwestern on scholarship, Beatrice cried in public and said she had “raised me like her own.”
Privately, she told me not to forget who had fed me.
I did not forget.
I also did not forget that I had cleaned the kitchen where the food was cooked.
Beatrice owned a small event planning company called Bellamy & Rose.
On the outside, it looked elegant.
Weddings.
Fundraisers.
Corporate galas.
Crystal rentals.
Imported orchids.
On the inside, it was drowning.
Late vendor payments.
Cancelled contracts.
Tax warnings hidden in drawers.
Chloe spent money faster than Beatrice could borrow it.
By the time I graduated college and started working as a compliance analyst for a commercial lending firm, Beatrice had discovered something useful.
My name.
My credit.
My clean record.
She asked me to review one loan application.
Then another.
Then she began bringing papers to family dinners.
“Just sign here, Audrey. It’s only a reference.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Don’t be dramatic. You owe this family.”
That sentence followed me like a leash.
I owed them for shelter.
For food.
For not being alone after my mother died.
Beatrice made debt out of basic decency and charged interest forever.
The first forged loan appeared two years after college.
$75,000.
Then $140,000.
Then a line of credit secured by documents carrying my signature.
Not my real signature.
A careful copy.
Good enough for people who did not expect a respectable woman like Beatrice Vale to commit fraud against her orphaned niece.
When I found out, my hands went numb.
I drove to Beatrice’s office with printed records in a folder and waited until her staff left.
She looked at the documents.
Then at me.
For once, she did not perform innocence immediately.
“Where did you get these?”
“At work.”
“You had no right.”
“To find loans in my name?”
Her mouth tightened.
“Audrey, you don’t understand business.”
“I understand forgery.”
She cried then.
Not because she was sorry.
Because tears had always worked.
She said Chloe had debts.
She said Bellamy & Rose would collapse.
She said she had planned to repay everything before I noticed.
She said if I reported her, I would destroy the only family I had left.
That line almost worked.
Almost.
But my mother’s voice was louder.
Remember details.
I gave Beatrice forty-eight hours to sign a repayment agreement and confess through an attorney.
She agreed.
She hugged me.
May you like
She promised.
Then the fire happened.
