Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
It was two weeks before Christmas that Addison’s parents packed up their things and moved into Addison’s place.
Lucky for everyone, there was a guest bedroom with its own bathroom on the first floor, which kept the grandparents at a slight distance from the rest of the family.
But that slight distance didn’t keep Addison from hearing their arguments late at night, followed by their tears and slammed doors.
Addison still couldn’t believe any of this was happening.
One minute, her parents had been conscious businesspeople, preparing to pass on the inn to Addison and retire in their own right.
Now, apparently, they had nothing. They had so little that, in the days after the sale of the hotel, they were forced to sell the majority of their belongings, including many of the gorgeous antiques that had lined the rooms and halls of the Golden Sunset Hotel since Addison was a girl.
Seeing other people load those pieces onto trucks and take them out of town tore at Addison’s heart. But what could be done?
Hugh hadn’t involved Addison in the sale of the Golden Sunset Hotel in the slightest. When Addison had asked her mother about this, about why her father was being so cagey about all the business goings-on when he’d previously brought Addison into everything, Beth simply said, “Hugh knows what he’s doing.
” Addison didn’t like that as an answer, but she didn’t know how to stand up to her emotionally volatile father, not now that everything seemed so complicated.
It had been quite a year. Seth had abandoned them for God knew what reason. On top of that, Seth wasn’t even his name. And now, her family had lost everything.
About a week before Christmas, Addison secured a job at another hotel in the area.
She would have nearly as many responsibilities as she’d had at her parents’ hotel, but she’d be paid about 20 percent more.
It was a very good deal and one that made her feel lucky and slightly guilty.
When she returned from the final interview, she found her parents and her children in the living room, decorating the Christmas tree.
Addison had been scrambling, looking for a job, trying to manage her life so much that she’d forgotten to decorate for Christmas.
“Look, Mom!” Gavin cried, pointing at the stockings they’d hung on the fireplace. “We hung up Dad’s just in case he comes home before Christmas.”
The sight of Seth’s stocking, dangling there, waiting, felt like a knife through Addison’s stomach.
She grimaced into a smile and pressed a kiss onto Gavin’s forehead, then searched her mother’s and father’s faces for some sense that they’d hung the stocking to hurt her.
They were emotionally all over the place.
Maybe they weren’t sure what they were doing.
Then again, she wasn’t sure if she could bring herself not to hang Seth’s stocking, no matter what he’d done or not done.
He was still her husband. She didn’t know how to fall out of love with him.
She was grateful, however, that Charlotte had stopped writing to her.
Apparently, the Whitmores had gotten the hint that she was a Green, and she couldn’t forgive.
Now that the hotel had been sold, Charlotte expected her parents to find a place of their own. But when she brought it up to her mother, Beth shut her down. “We’ve given you everything,” she said, her voice high-pitched and strange. “Can’t you help us out?”
Addison didn’t like that. But she said, “I didn’t mean to put pressure on you, Mom. I was just curious about the plan.” Everyone kept her in the dark.
Six days before Christmas, Addison went back to the Golden Sunset Hotel.
Although the new owners had already taken her father’s and mother’s keys, they hadn’t taken hers, which meant she could sneak in if she wanted to.
The plan, she’d heard, was to refurbish the hotel and open it as a luxury resort the following year.
Standing in the foyer, a place she’d spent an innumerable number of hours in, her eyes filled with tears.
She couldn’t believe she’d never look out the window at their beach and watch her children running again.
She couldn’t believe she’d never greet guests here, bring them to their rooms, and welcome them to Hawaii—the most glorious place on earth.
She’d do the same at her new job, she supposed. But it wouldn’t be the same.
Addison explored for a little while, walking slowly down the hallways, feeling like a ghost. This was where she’d first met her second husband. That corner was where she’d sobbed when she’d known it was really over with Chris.
When Addison happened to enter the office, she was surprised to find that her father hadn’t sold off the desk, and much of his official paperwork remained in the drawers.
It felt as though he couldn’t face the awful business side of things, the money of it all.
Perhaps this was why he and her mother couldn’t answer her questions about it when they were moving out.
Was he hoping someone else would simply toss it out?
Addison began to go through the paperwork, curious.
Could she find when, exactly, things had begun to crumble?
She hadn’t been able to before, but maybe she hadn’t been looking in the right spot.
Perhaps she hadn’t been desperate enough.
But no matter how tirelessly Addison looked, it seemed that the money coming in and going out had been the same as the previous few years.
It didn’t make sense. Her head pounding, she searched again through her father’s documents until she discovered—on a Post-it of all things—her father’s banking information.
She’d never taken her father for a liar.
But what if what he’d written down in the physical books he kept didn’t match the bank records?
What if there had been some kind of mistake?
She knew it was too late to save the hotel because the sale had already gone through. But if there had been foul play, if they were still being robbed of something, she needed to know. Maybe they could take legal action. Perhaps she could secure enough money for her parents to get their own place.
It didn’t take long for Addison to discover the leak.
It had begun in September of that year—three months ago.
Throughout September, October, and November, her father had sent money to a mysterious bank account.
The bank account’s address was listed as international, indicating it wasn’t in the USA.
After a bit of googling, Addison discovered that the bank was located in Mexico City.
Her heart throbbed with dread. Why on earth would her father be sending money to someone in Mexico City?
The worst of it was that the amount kept going up. At the beginning of September, her father had sent ten grand, but by December, the amount was 180 grand. In total, he’d sent 670,000 dollars.
Addison couldn’t breathe, not at first. She tried to rationalize why her father had done something like this.
She wondered if he had a friend in Mexico City, a friend who needed medical assistance or money for housing.
She wondered if her father had gotten into debt, doing something kind for someone else.
But that didn’t sound like Hugh Stapleton.
After digging more through her father’s bank account, she logged out and pulled all the drawers from the desk to rifle through his papers and letters.
There had to be information here. There had to be something.
It seemed that last year, her father had grown increasingly disorganized, throwing things into odd corners, like a frantic man at the end.
But it wasn’t like people wrote letters as much anymore.
If there was anything, it had to be on his phone or in his email.
She tried opening the hotel’s email, but discovered nothing.
She had to break into her father’s email account.
To do that, all she had to do was find the first Post-it, the same one that had offered up the details of her father’s bank account. In the future, she had to talk to him about internet security. But it was maybe too little, too late.
Once in his email account, Addison skimmed and skimmed.
Most of it was trash and advertisements.
Some of the emails were between her mother and father, reminding one another to do things for the hotel.
In none of them was there a frantic air.
This meant that her mother hadn’t known that the hotel was at risk until it was too late.
Finally, an email from a mysterious address appeared. It was sent the day before the most recent payment to the Mexico City account. Addison clicked and read What more can I say? You either pay up, or I tell your wife and daughter the truth. Yours, A.
A? Addison’s ears rang. She clicked out of that last email and searched for others from the same address to discover that the emails had begun all the way back in summer—around the time, incidentally, that Seth had gone missing.
The emails started friendly enough. In them, “A” suggested that he knew more about Hugh Stapleton than Hugh wanted out in the public.
Her father responded by telling “A” to “get lost,” which only led “A” to threaten him further.
“A” told her father that he knew everything that Hugh had been up to and wouldn’t hesitate to spill the beans about Hugh’s secrets.
Addison’s hands were shaking. Secrets? More secrets? But it wasn’t till she read the emails from September—right before her father paid up for the first time—that she understood.
“A” wrote Your wife and daughter will be brokenhearted when they learn about her, you know. You’ve been a very bad man, Hugh Stapleton. Do you think they’ll ever forgive you when they learn?
Addison took a sharp breath. It was clear, now.
Her father had been having an affair. Her father had been in love with someone else.
And somehow, “A” had discovered the truth and decided to hit her father where he hurt.
He’d learned and taunted Hugh more than Hugh could possibly stand, until Hugh had had no choice but to sell the hotel and give up.
“Why did you do it, Dad?” Addison whispered, her eyes smarting.
She suddenly thought of Seth Green, of his secret identity and his secret past. She realized, with a strange heaviness in her chest, that she’d never once doubted that Seth or Jack or whoever he was loved her and was faithful to her. She wasn’t sure if she was naive or what.
Had she always thought her father was faithful to her mother? She supposed she hadn’t let her mind go there. All kids, no matter their age, wanted their parents to be in love. She thought of her children, hanging Seth’s stocking up on the fireplace. She was no different from them.