I Don't Need Your Blue Roses Anymore novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Letters

At the bank, Anneliese learns Dean answered twenty-two transfer alerts with the word ok, and she freezes the account. Her father asks her to dinner and says Mallory is a good girl; at her aunt's door she learns he changed the lock on her mother's cottage.

I spent Monday night in a motel off Colorado Boulevard with my phone face down.

By morning it showed thirty-one missed calls.

Twenty-two were Dean, and nine were Mallory.

The last text was from Mallory, sent at two a.m.

*Where are you? Dean is sick with worry. Call me, we can sort this out.*

I did not call her.

I was on the step of the bank at eight forty, and the doors opened at nine.

The officer who took my appointment was a tired man in a gray suit.

He pulled up the account and turned his screen so I could read it.

"This is the joint savings account you hold with Mr. Pallister," he said.

"It was funded by my grandmother's estate," I said. "Twenty-two transfers left it in four months. I never approved one."

"Each transfer was approved by an authorized user on the account," he said. "Ms. Stafford."

"I never added her."

"Mr. Pallister added her in March, to help with wedding vendors."

Behind me, a line of customers was shifting its weight.

I kept my voice level.

"Show me the list."

He printed it and slid it across the desk.

Eleven transfers went to wedding vendors.

The other eleven went to a single account ending in 4471.

The bank would not tell me who owned it without a police report.

"Every approval was also confirmed by text to Mr. Pallister's phone," the officer said.

He read the reply log aloud.

"The answer each time was the same. It says, 'ok.'"

My stomach turned over.

Dean had been sent twenty-two chances to ask me one question, and he had answered all twenty-two with two letters.

"Remove Ms. Stafford from the account," I said. "Freeze it. Today."

"I can freeze it with either owner's signature," he said. "Mr. Pallister's isn't needed for that."

I signed.

I signed for the freeze, and I signed for the removal, and my pen did not shake.

The woman at the front of the line gave me a small nod as I walked out.

My phone rang before I reached the car.

The screen said *Dad*.

My father, Gordon Wardell, had built half the houses in the San Gabriel Valley, and he answered every conflict in the same warm voice.

"Sweetheart," he said. "Dean called me last night. He's beside himself."

"Dad, someone took over a hundred thousand dollars of Grandma's money."

"Now, I've heard Mallory moved some funds around for the wedding," he said. "I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation."

"The explanation is that I never agreed to it."

"Mallory is a good girl, Anneliese. She has been at your side since you were twelve. Don't punish her over a misunderstanding."

He said it gently, and I felt it settle on me.

"I want the venue canceled," I said. "All of it. The garden, the caterer, the party at the restaurant."

"I paid for the venue," he said. "The deposit is gone either way."

"Then it's gone."

"Come to dinner tomorrow night," he said. "Seven o'clock. Bring Dean. We'll talk it through as a family."

I thought about saying no.

I had said no to him exactly twice in my life.

"Seven," I said, and hung up before he could be kind to me again.

I went to the school and signed the substitute forms for the week.

I did not tell anyone why.

I spent the afternoon in the parking lot with a sandwich I didn't eat, and at dusk I drove up the hill to Sierra Madre.

My aunt Frances lived in a small green house at the end of a lane with hydrangeas along the fence.

She was my late mother's older sister, and I had not been up the hill in two years.

Dean had always had something on Saturdays.

She opened the door with her reading glasses on a cord and a trowel still in her hand.

She looked at my suitcase, and then at my face.

"Well," she said. "It's about time."

She took the bag from me and set it inside.

I told her all of it in the kitchen while she poured tea I didn't drink.

When I got to the bank, she put the pot down.

"Anneliese," she said. "Your father had the lock changed on your mother's cottage last week."

I stared at her.

"What cottage?"

"The one that has been yours since your twenty-fifth birthday," Frances said. "Did he ever tell you it was?"

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