Page 78 of Laurels and Liquor

Jason holds up his hands. “I thought y’all were charging him rent, considering how long he’s been hanging around,” he volleys.

We share another laugh, but fall silent. The hurt I’ve been feeling, about being lied to and being kept in the dark, resurfaces, but I try to keep my face impassive.

“I am sorry, Lydi. If things hadn’t been… what they were, I would have told you right away. But when Lex told me y’all wanted some time to adjust, I just…” Jason trails off, leaning back in his chair and twisting his fingers together nervously.

I stay silent, waiting for him to go on. I don’t like that he lied to me, even by omission, and I’m not about to make this easy on him.

“You deserve to be happy, Lydia. And damn it all if I wanted you to have that, even for a little while. But you want the truth now, so I’ll give it to you.”

He launches into his explanation, describing the fallout after Sam’s wedding, our mother, Diane’s, fall from grace within our church, and then the insanity of the brawl that took place the night Jason finally left them all behind. I try to hold on to my anger, to stay mad at him for keeping this from me, but the more I think on it, the harder that becomes. With everything that was going on at the time, would it really have made things better if I’d known what Jason was dealing with? I would have stormed back there to try to rescue him without hesitation, even though it would have been stupid and, frankly, suicidal. He did it to keep me safe and out of harm’s way, yet again.

Jason finishes his tale, and we lapse into silence, a heavy, charged thing that almost feels like another presence in the room. My brother jumps when I reach out and take his hand, and I’m surprised by how cold it is. He looks at our clasped fingers for a moment before turning his wide-eyed gaze onto me.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that alone, Jace,” I murmur at last, speaking slowly but clearly so he can truly hear the emotion in my words.

He nods and gives my hand a little squeeze. “It’s done, in the past. I’m out now,” he says, trying to sound unruffled, but there’s still a catch in his voice.

“We’ll make it right. They’ve gone on long enough without consequences for the way they’ve treated us. I don’t know how, but I swear to God—”

“I do,” Jason interrupts, pulling the messenger bag toward us.

I blink as he lets go of my hand and digs in the bag for a minute, pulling out several manila envelopes of documents and piling them neatly on the table. It’s a relatively small stack, only about an inch or two high, but the care with which he’s handling them piques my curiosity.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg, Lydi, and you’re not going to believe what I’ve found.”

By the time I’ve looked through the documents Jason put in front of me, my head is swimming with numbers. And I’m not bad at math; I had to take my fair share of business accounting classes as part of my hospitality degree. It’s been a few years since I’ve had to use any of that knowledge, but I can recall enough to see the patterns laid out in black and white.

Embezzlement. Lots of it. Like, hundreds of millions of dollars of embezzlement going back before Jason and I were even born.

From the very beginning, my father was skimming off the top of contracts, double charging for materials that supposedly went missing, but then magically reappeared on another job, based on the “in-house supplies” expense lines. It’s subtle, but the proof is undeniable, especially as Jason explains the missing pieces that he didn’t bring with him, but are in boxes and on hard drives he brought when he left Louisiana in October.

“Do you recognize that account number?” Jason asks at one point, pointing to a line on a spreadsheet.

And with a rush of ice through my veins, I nod. Because I do. That’s my mother’s personal account. I know those numbers because I had to put them down on every direct deposit form I filled out while I lived under her roof. I was never allowed to keep my paychecks, because I had to contribute to the upkeep of the pack. But these numbers I’m seeing show that she never needed my measly minimum wage pay. She had no reason to take my money, other than to make sure I didn’t have it. And when Jason shows me the lavish purchases, the designer clothes she bought to wear once to a business party and then never again; the luxury vacations she said were business trips for Dad and his clients, but then he always had some reason to back out of; the high-end cars that she always claimed belonged to the company and us children could never touch. All of it was a lie.

“They’re both implicated in this shit. Because there’s no way Dad wasn’t aware of how much he was paying her every week,” Jason snarls, low and dangerous.

“Not that he wasn’t doing his own dirty dealings. Why did he think he could get away with invoicing the company $10,000 a month for ‘office supplies?’” I snap.

“Because he never thought I’d leave,” Jason says with a heavy finality.

I take his hand again, my heart on fire with rage. They used us, lied to us, treated us like pawns for their own gain. I was nothing more than a bargaining chip, something they could sell off to the highest bidder. And Jason was the unquestioning, dutiful son, never allowed to ask questions but always expected to do as commanded. And when we stepped out of line and couldn’t be brought to heel, they cast us out.

“Who else knows?” I ask, my voice cutting through the tense silence.

“About the fraud? Hard to say, but I know Adam is too much of a pussy-ass bitch to—”

“Watch yourself,” Rhett snaps, speaking for the first time.

Jason sighs and rubs his eyes. “Adam doesn’t work, but he’s still getting a six-figure salary. He’s a junkie, about as useful as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, and has his head shoved so far up our parents’ collective ass that he can taste the back of their tonsils. Pardon me if I wanted to use a shorthand to explain all that.”

“We don’t use that sort of language in this pack. Get used to it, Jace,” Rhett says simply, not even looking up from the vegetables he’s prepping.

I smother my amusement for Jason’s sake, but I don’t miss the sly wink Rhett throws in my direction. I’ve heard him say far worse than that about my family, but his willingness to force sexist language out of the house is admirable. My brother heaves another sigh, but thankfully lets the matter drop for now.

“Sammy’s good, by the way. I had a feeling he didn’t know what’s been happening, so I asked him straight up before I left. He’s furious that he’s been busting his hump for Dad, basically doing all the hard work while getting none of the benefits, and even getting robbed in the process,” he says, going back to my original question.

“Who knows you have all this hard evidence?” I press, wheels turning in my head.

---