The Trust

Chapter 33: The Fall

When the sky fell, it fell hard.

Julie's divorce shocked the hell out of all of me. I didn't even know things were bad between them.

She kept it from everyone for months, I understand that. I certainly didn't want everyone in my business when I was going through the hardest time of my life in tearing my life from Clive's. I just don't get why Julie kept it from me. After all the nights I cried on her shoulder about my marriage ending, she never said a word. I could have been there for her, given her support. The only thing I can figure is that she refused to believe it herself until the papers were signed. 

The whole awful story came tumbling out one night when she arrived on my doorstep, suitcase in hand and a terribly lost look in her mascara-smeared eyes. "It's over," she said. 

"What's over?"I thought the jig was up and Uncle Rob finally confessed to scamming the lot of them. What she said next chilled me.

"Everything." 

Over a glass of wine, she told me about the quick and brutal ending to her 20-year marriage. 

She and Grant were on the same page about the money at first. In fact, Grant was enthusiastically on board, even flying to Montreal to pick up her new Mercedes and drive it back. But the unity didn't last.

As the delays and excuses built up, Grant smelled a rat. He was out when Rob first started hinting that he needed money to release the funds. He forbid Julie to give Rob any money. They argued and fought about it for weeks. That's where Julie made her biggest mistake.

She pestered and pestered Grant to give the first $10,000, believing with all her heart it was just a short term loan needed to unlock a huge payday. But Grant refused to budge. So, Julie she thought she could do what she wanted and just explain and beg forgiveness later. She cashed out some of their retirement funds and even dipped into the kids' college fund, as Rob asked for another $10,000 and then another — my mother's and my share.

She gave that man $30,000 of their hard-earned savings. Now the ink was drying on the divorce Grant hastily arranged after he found out. He didn't get mad when he found out, she said. Just really quiet. That was worse. 

The guilt was driving her crazy. Every day, she wanted to tell him, but chickened out. Then one day, he went in and checked the funds, something he never did. She handled all the money, she never guessed he'd go looking into their retirement funds. Turned out, he was thinking about retiring early and planning a surprise cruise for the both of them. What he discovered took his breath away. 

"I wanted him to scream, yell at me — anything. The silence was deadly cold. I'd never seen him like that. The night he found out, he went to bed as soon as I told him like a zombie, barely meeting my eyes. He slept in the spare room and the next morning, he told me all the love he had for me died when I lied and betrayed him like that. And that he didn't know me anymore," she said, sniffling. She took a large gulp of wine and refilled her glass. "I actually laughed. Can you believe that. I told him he was being dramatic, that we could make that money back in a month with our successful businesses, less time than that as soon as the money came in. I though I could talk him around, like I always do. I was wrong."

I'd never seen my vivacious sister so defeated. She ended up giving him everything in the divorce, including the house and the kids. They were furious with her for hurting their dad and raiding their college funds so both teenagers decided to stay with him. She was alone, broke and homeless. She still had the Mercedes, but she'd put it up for sale. Her business was floundering, since she'd taken two weeks off to go to Spain and was focused more on the supposed windfall  than growing the client list over the past few months. She was bleeding revenue, but now too distracted and heartsick to care. 

"I lost everything," she kept saying. "My home, my family, my dignity. And for what?" She raised her weeping eyes to me. "For nothing."

I'd give anything to have a magic wand and rewind the last few months back to repair the seismic cracks within my family. All I could do was hug her and tell her was staying with me until she sorted things out with Grant. That's when she showed me the divorce papers. It was already done.

Over the next few days, she refused to get out of bed. I brought her meals and opened the curtains trying to get her to get up and join the world, but she'd just turn over and go back to sleep. Mom fretted constantly about her, taking her cups of tea and plates of biscuits she left untouched. Out of earshot, mom railed against Grant.

"How dare he?" she hissed when she was sure Julie couldn't hear. "He must have another woman waiting in the wings. There's no way he could leave her like that so suddenly if there wasn't another, younger woman hovering in the background."

"Not all men are like that, Mom. That's a page from Clive's rulebook," I said. "Grant's not the type."

"I didn't think so," she said. "I treated him like a son. Turns out I didn't know him at all. He should be ashamed of himself. He's going to feel very foolish when the money comes in."

When the money comes in. I was hearing that phrase less and less from the family, all of whom seemed to be in their own version of hell waiting to see what was happening with the perpetually-delayed fortune. Mom was one of the few who was still vocal about her belief that everything was fine and Rob just had another health-related delay.

"He'll be back from Europe by the end of the week, and then everyone will eat their words," she said weeks ago. So far, that hadn't happened; surprise, surprise.

"Who's everyone?" I'd said at the time.

"The doubters and haters," she sniffed, looking at me. I just shook my head and walked away.

After nearly a week, hollow-eyed and pale, Julie got out of bed and joined us. She'd sleepwalk through her days going through the motions, but there was nothing behind her eyes. One thing was for sure: the rose-coloured glasses around my Uncle and the fortune coming her way were well and truly smashed. 

It seemed that they were falling from the eyes of most of my family, except my Mom.

I stopped getting invited to the family meetings long ago, falling into the category of 'doubter/hater,' but I noted there hadn't been one for a while. Then, I started hearing rumours.

Grey Harbour was a small town, not much happened without everyone noticing and discussing at the local coffee shop. First, I heard that my uncle Peter Jack had missed so many mortgage payments, there was a lien on his property. Aunt Eva had to sell the boat she bought and the new truck. Cousin Violet had her shiny black truck taken away, and was facing eviction from her landlord. Her brothers were at each others' throats, one was facing a divorce and the other one, bankruptcy from all the spending he'd been doing over the past six months and the credit card payments he couldn't meet.

The townspeople themselves were grumbling about their investment reports that didn't arrive and the money that was promised that never made it to their bank accounts. They were supposed to get monthly statements to show the phenomenal growth in their investment, but after Douglas Day, there was no further word from him. The empty lot by the waterfront said to have been purchased for the new development sat idle and empty. There was a story going around that the cheque Rob used to pay for the property had bounced and town council was being raked over the coals about the foolish investment. 

Someone defaced the Douglas Brook sign with the word SCAMMERS spray-painted in blood red. An angry old guy spit at the feet of my Uncle Jack when he came out of the pharmacy. "Thanks to your family, we're broke. Buncha thieving sons of bitches," he snarled. 

Then Uncle Rob disappeared. As in, off the face of the earth.

The Douglas Family Facebook group was deleted and the members blocked. His and Kat's numbers were both disconnected, so no one had been able to call or text them. No one knew exactly where they lived in New York, or even if they ever did. Their property in the mountains was boarded up. It was if they never existed. 

Gone. 

With half the town's money and my family's dignity, good name and pride.