Chapter 2

I was stunned.

Aunt Marlene had never mentioned any of this. Had she really been quietly paying off my family's debts on her own for three years?

Back then, when Aunt Marlene came home and saw me holding the ledger, she only said flatly, "I've paid off part of what your parents owed. Once you start working, you'll pay off the rest yourself. There's no rush."

Her tone was as neutral as if she were just assigning me a chore.

Even so, I was deeply moved. I thought that although she was usually distant, she truly cared about family after all.

After I graduated, I went to her on my own. She dug up an account number and sent it to me. "It's 4,000 dollars a month. Just transfer it to this account."

From that day on, I carried a debt that did not exist.

I kept paying it for four years, 4,000 dollars every month without fail. All told, it came to 192,000 dollars.

During those years, I worked from dawn until late at night, ate only two meals a day, lived in a run-down part of town, and never dared to go to a single gathering. I factored every bonus into the repayment plan and was too afraid to take a sick day even when I was ill. I lived like a machine.

Last month, I ran a fever of 104 degrees and forced myself to finish a project proposal before going to the hospital. The ER doctor told me that if I had come in two hours later, my life would have been in danger.

Even then, I refused when the doctor wanted to admit me. I went home as soon as the IV was finished.

Only now did I realize that the debt I had worked myself to the bone to repay had never been real. Every dollar I had saved at the risk of my own life had gone straight to Uncle Ronald.

Aunt Marlene had never been particularly good to me while I was growing up, yet I was still grateful to her for paying for my education and helping me with the debt. Now, that gratitude looked like a joke.

A chill ran through my entire body, and I was desperate to confront her. However, I forced myself to stay calm. There were still too many things I needed to confirm.

If the debt was fake, had my parents' houses really been sold off to pay it back when I was little?

Standing outside the bank, I took out my phone and booked a train ticket back to my hometown. There were some things I needed to see with my own eyes.

When the train pulled in, I went straight to the old house I remembered. The stairwell was the same as ever, though most of the green paint on the handrail had worn away.

I took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

A middle-aged woman answered. I told her I was trying to track down family and was looking for the people who used to live there. She did not ask many questions and stepped aside to let me in.

"I bought this house on July 16, 2008. The lady of the house handled the sale with me."

July 16, 2008.

My parents had already been dead for half a month by then. How could either of them have handed over the house?

I forced myself to keep it together and smiled. "Do you still have the contract or any other paperwork from back then? I'd like to look at the handwriting to make sure it's the person I'm looking for."

She went into the back room, searched for a long while, and came back with a stack of yellowed papers.

I pulled up the photos of Mom's handwriting on my phone and compared them for a long time. The handwriting looked exactly like Mom's, yet some of the letters looked slightly shaky, as if someone had been carefully imitating it.

I held back the emotions churning inside me and found a photo of Aunt Marlene on my phone. "Could you take a look? Is this the woman?"

She only glanced at it before nodding. "Yes, that's her."

I stared at the official stamp on the forensic report for a full three minutes.

The handwriting analysis concluded that the questioned signature and the reference samples had not been written by the same person.

Those few short words burned into me like a hot iron.

The signature on the sales contract had been written by Aunt Marlene. She had forged Mom's handwriting and secretly sold the house that rightfully belonged to our family.

My heart sank as I slowly pieced together all the lies she had told me over the years.

She had spun a story without a single hole in it. She told me that a young woman on her own was not safe, that the lenders had nasty tempers, and that it would be best for her to deal with them on my behalf.

She never let them contact me and only gave me a single account number for regular transfers. She also said the lenders needed the money urgently and that monthly payments would keep them from causing trouble.

I kept thinking about how much she had paid off for my parents and did not want her to end up out of pocket. On top of the fixed 4,000 dollars each month, I scraped together an extra 1,000 dollars and sent that over as well.