Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Julia took a sip of her wine and tapped the back of her pen against her lips. She was curled up in bed, going over the stack of finance papers from the pub that her mother had given her. She liked math, and she hadn’t expected to find the task too daunting, but a preliminary glance at all of the paperwork told her that she might be in for more of a rollercoaster than she’d bargained for.
“Let me see,” she murmured, scribbling down a few figures in a notebook that was lying open on the sheets next to her. “What does that figure mean? Come on, Dad. These are pretty cryptic. You clearly weren’t expecting to go anytime soon.”
She bit her lip as tears sprang to her eyes again. She blinked them back and forced herself to concentrate on her math.
For another few minutes, she did her best to analyze all the documents and the lists that her father had written up by hand, but her frown soon became deeper and deeper. She took another sip of wine as she continued to scribble down notes, trying to make sense of the discrepancies in the paperwork.
All of a sudden, she froze. For a few heartbeats, she stared down at the paperwork, unable to believe her eyes.
There were questionable transactions littered across the documents, and she was suddenly hit with a guess of what they might be. At first, she hadn’t had any kind of idea what they were, but then she was hit with a hunch that she didn’t like in the slightest. Her heart was beating faster with dismay, but she climbed out of bed and went to get her laptop from where it was resting on a chair by the window. She brought it back to bed with her and opened it, pressing her lips together.
A great deal of money had been given by her father to some place called The Silver Horseman, and when she searched that name online, she discovered that it was a casino.
“Oh, Dad, no,” she whispered, feeling shock thump in her bloodstream with every heartbeat.
She searched for a few more of the names that had been written alongside the questionable transactions, and discovered three more casinos, all of which were close enough to Rosewood Beach that they could be driven to.
She clapped her hand to her mouth, taking a deep breath. It was clear to her that her father had been concealing a gambling habit, something that neither his wife nor any of his children knew anything about. Or at least she assumed her mother knew nothing about any of it—she felt sure Vivian would have said something about it before asking her to look over the pub’s finances.
She leaned back against the pillows, feeling stunned. She stared down numbly at the papers for a few moments, her mind racing.
She gazed down at the papers, her heart thumping, and then she started to shake her head. She refused to believe it. There must be some other explanation. Some of the transactions were dated as far back as twenty-five years ago, which would mean that Frank had been out gambling during some of the long nights during her childhood when they all thought he was working late at The Lighthouse Grill.
She picked up the papers again, going over the numbers and hoping to find some other explanation. Maybe he invested in the casinos as businesses, or he was friends with someone who owned them and he leant them money…
But as she frantically tried to find some other explanation for what she was seeing in the finance records, she became more and more convinced against her will that her father had had a gambling problem. It became clear to her that a lot of the figures weren’t payments, but debts.
Her heart sank. She laid the papers back down on the bedsheets, taking a deep breath to try to steady herself.
Even more than the disappointment and shock that she felt, this created a problem. His gambling debts appeared to be unresolved, which left a huge hole in the financial security of the pub.
Oh, I hope Mom knew about this , she thought, running her fingers through her hair.
There was a buzzing kind of heaviness in the pit of her stomach. She kept pouring over the financial documents, taking sips of wine as she went, for the next few minutes, but the more she looked, the more she became sure that her father had had a terrible gambling problem, and that most of his debts were still unresolved.
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. She didn’t want to have to tell Vivian. She hoped that her mother had known, or at least had an inkling, of what Frank had been doing with their money, but she was worried that her mother had had no more idea of it than she’d had, and that the news would break her heart all over again.
Julia stacked the papers slowly, telling herself that there would be a way out of their mess and that it was all going to turn out all right. Hopefully her mother already knew. Maybe there was even some other logical explanation that Julia hadn’t thought of. Maybe Vivian already had some kind of plan.
She turned out the light and lay down in bed, shutting her eyes tightly. She was dreading telling her mother.
“Did you know about this, Mom?” she whispered, opening her eyes again. “Or did Dad hide this from all of us?”
Vivian traced her fingers along the edge of a photo frame, gazing down at the picture of Frank. It was their wedding photo, a picture of them standing side by side outside the church and smiling broadly. His green eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, his face framed by the thick red hair that had started to thin into baldness in later years. She noticed how muscular he was in the picture and thought to herself with a smile that he’d still been fairly muscular even as an older man, despite his stomach softening a little.
He looked proud, she thought. Proud that he was marrying her, and confident In his ability to succeed. He’d just started The Lighthouse Grill a few months before their marriage, and he’d been on top of the world back then, sure that they would have everything they could ever want and more.
“I did have everything I could ever want, Frank,” she whispered, blinking back tears. “I had you, and a good life with everything we needed. And I still have all of our beautiful children.”
She took a shaky breath, telling herself she needed to steady her emotions and carry on with her work. She placed the photo inside a cardboard box—the last box that she needed to bring to the church before the funeral, which was in two days’ time. She felt relieved at the prospect of being done with all of the funeral arrangements, but at the same time she was grateful that all of the preparations had kept her busy. She was worried that her grief was going to hit her that much harder if she slowed down for even a moment.
She was just picking up the box, about to take it out to her car, when she heard a knock on her front door.
Curious, she set the box down and went to open the door. People didn’t knock on her door without warning hardly ever anymore. That was something that had been common before cell phones, but now even her neighbors usually sent her some sort of message before dropping by.
She opened the door and her eyebrows lifted in surprise when she saw Julia standing there. Her daughter looked tired, and clearly upset about something. Julia’s face, normally decked out in an elaborate makeup job, was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t gotten much sleep.
“Julia!” Vivian reached out to give her daughter a hug. “Is everything all right?”
Julia took a deep breath and said, “Can we go sit down and talk for a little while?”
Vivian knew in that moment that everything was not all right, and her heart sank.
“Yes, of course.” She smiled bravely at her daughter, even though her bloodstream had started to rush faster with nervousness. “Come on and sit down in the living room with me.”
Julia stepped inside and they made their way into the cozy, tidy living room. Vivian watched Julia’s eyes sweep around the room slowly, and she guessed that her daughter was remembering all of the good times they’d had together in that room. Christmases and birthdays and family movie nights, with all of them shouting and laughing and playing games and eating good food.
She sat down on the couch and took Julia’s hands in hers as soon as her daughter sat down beside her. “Now tell me what’s troubling you.”
“Mom.” Julia looked into her mother’s eyes for a moment, and then looked down at the carpet. “There… I was going over the finances last night.”
There was a long pause, and Vivian’s heart started to pound.
“Is something wrong with the finances, honey?”
Julia looked back up into her mother’s eyes. “You don’t know, then?” she asked softly. “I was hoping that maybe you knew.”
“Knew what?” She squeezed her daughter’s hands. “Tell me, please.”
Was there something wrong with the pub’s finances? Were they in trouble somehow? If that was the case, she wasn’t sure how she could cope with it. In the middle of her grief about Frank, she’d been leaning on the fact that she got to continue running The Lighthouse Grill and carrying on the family legacy.
“I looked at the pub’s finances last night,” Julia said slowly, squeezing her mother’s hands back. “And I found some strange things.” She paused for a moment, and Vivian’s stomach lurched. She could tell from her daughter’s body language that something was very wrong. “I found that Dad had a lot of debt. That… that the pub still has a lot of debt. A lot of debt to casinos.”
Vivian’s heart stopped for a moment. She stared at her daughter, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Casinos? But—but Frank never gambled.”
The way Julia winced made it clear that Frank had gambled. And if he had debts, that would mean that he must have gambled a lot…
She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself even though her blood was rushing in her ears. “Tell me more. Are you sure he gambled?”
Julia nodded. “He did. He gambled a lot.” Her voice was soft, and she winced again, seeming to know how much the news was hurting Vivian.
“When? Just recently, or?—”
Julia shook her head. “For a long time. It looks like he’d been gambling for years.”
Vivian covered her face with her hands, unable to stop the tears from coming. She could hardly believe it, but she had to. She knew Julia was not only careful but considerate, and that she never would have come to her with that information unless she’d been absolutely sure that it was true.
“How could he have kept this from me?” she said, her voice almost a whisper. Frank had been a quiet man, but she’d always believed that he shared everything with her. He’d usually had good spirits, often whistling and making jokes when he wasn’t quietly working or thinking. She couldn’t believe that for all those years, he’d been hiding such an ugly secret from her.
“So you had no idea?” Julia asked softly, wrapping an arm around her mother. “And none of my siblings had any idea either?”
Vivian shook her head, feeling as though the ground was unstable under her feet. She felt as though her whole perception of her husband as the caretaker of her and her children had been deflated. “No idea. He—he lied to me for all those years.”
Julia held her mother tightly, almost rocking her back and forth a little. “Everyone makes mistakes. It doesn’t mean he didn’t love us. I know it hurts, but it doesn’t erase all the good things he was either.”
Vivian took a deep breath, closing her eyes and feeling comforted by her daughter’s words. “You’re right.”
“We’re all here for you, Mom. We love you. Everything’s going to turn out okay. And I will be right here with you, helping you figure all this out.”
Vivian nodded, taking a deep breath. She would stay strong for her children, and she knew they would stay strong for each other and for her. As hard a blow as the news was, she was grateful that she didn’t have to face it alone.