The Unsent Appeal Chapter 17
She took the cash, investment gold coins, and jewelry from the safe, and used the passwords my parents had shared with her to transfer money out of their bank accounts.
She also had the family’s Social Security numbers and digital signatures.
Using my parents’ and Tyler’s identities, she opened multiple lines of credit and borrowed large sums from several high-interest lenders.
One of them was an illegal loan shark.
The passwords, the location of their documents, even the combination to the safe—my parents had told her everything, believing it was a sign of trust.
In the end, all that information became the tool she used to sever ties with them for good.
Dad grabbed my sleeve.
“Those lenders sent people to the house.”
“When Tyler got into an argument with them, they broke his leg.”
“We still have his medical bills to pay, on top of the mortgage.”
“Now we can only scrape by doing odd jobs wherever we can find them.”
Mom cried as she said, “I regret giving Allison everything.”
“Last year, someone told us she’d gone to Florida with a rich man.”
“Later we found out he was already married.”
“His wife found Allison at a hotel and beat her so badly she was seriously injured.”
“Now no one knows where she is.”
Dad reached a hand out to me.
“Chlo, you’re all we have left now.”
Their situation was dire, and their apology sounded more sincere than it ever had before.
I still walked right past them.
I didn’t stop.
I didn’t answer.
I told company security to remove them from the entrance.
They thought I was all they had left.
But I had stopped needing them a long, long time ago.