Home / They Faked Going Broke, I Found Myself a New Family / Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

All Chapters of They Faked Going Broke, I Found Myself a New Family: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

10 Chapters

Chapter 1

When the last transfer went through, Ben Carter, who ran the garage, was picking metal shavings out of my palm with tweezers."Tomorrow you can finally take a day off," he said.I turned my phone so he could see the screen. "It's paid off."Five hundred thousand dollars.I'd sold my car, handed over the money my grandmother had left for my tuition, and worked at the garage for a full year.I pulled up train tickets to New York and looked for the school's contact information. My offer of admission had expired. I didn't know if I could get it back.My mother called."Come home for dinner, and wear something decent. Your sister has a surprise for you."I went to the restroom and washed my hands three times. The grease under my nails wouldn't come off, and I couldn't straighten the middle finger on my right hand. I wrapped it in gauze and put on my coat.When I got to the Costa house, the iron gates slowly swung open.Last year, my father said getting Viola back had wiped us out. We'd have

Chapter 2

My father took the pen from me."Stop acting like a child."I pushed the check and the document back to him and pulled up my bank account."Three hundred thousand dollars came from the money my grandmother left me for college. I got $80,000 for my car. The other one hundred twenty thousand dollars came from my wages and my cut of the bodywork and custom paint jobs."My father's face darkened."Is that little bit of money really worth talking to me like that?""It is. It's my money."I sent my account details to his private number."Send back the five hundred thousand dollars. Keep the extra half million for your burial plot."My mother grabbed my hand and touched the bandage. It hurt, and I jerked away.She let go and stared at the gauze on my palm. "What happened to your hand?""Didn't you look at the photo I sent you last month?"That day, I'd asked if I could send the money two days late so I could get my hand looked at first.She'd written back that my sister was having nightmares

Chapter 3

Ben didn't ask why I'd come back so soon.He turned on the space heater upstairs and set a bowl of noodles on the table.I sat down and dropped my fork twice."They're fine," I said.Ben looked up."No bankruptcy. No debt. I'm the only one who believed it."By the time I'd told him everything about the dinner, the noodles had gone cold.Ben got up and circled the table twice.Finally he asked, "So what are you going to do?"I didn't answer right away.A year ago, when I turned down my spot at school, my father had gripped my shoulder and said a Costa daughter never runs in a crisis.So I closed the New York apartment listings and canceled my train ticket.After that, I removed tires and sanded paint at the garage. When people joked that my artist's hands couldn't even hold a wrench, I practiced taking parts off and putting them back on, over and over.Ben was willing to teach me. Clients started to recognize my colors and linework, and when things got busy, I had two people helping me

Chapter 4

Salvatore called me from the front door to ask if I wanted to come back."You don't have to rush back on our account. You don't have to see them at all."I'd just finished my doctor's appointment and was holding the bill."Let them wait. I'll be there in half an hour."When I walked in, my father was already seated in the living room, my mother beside him with two gift boxes. Enzo, leaning by the window, looked up at me."Tally up what she's cost you this week," my father told Salvatore. "I'll pay it. She won't be troubling you after this.""I can pay my own way." I set my coat down.My father frowned. "I'm talking to the man of the house.""But you're making decisions about me."Salvatore set my father's business card back down on the table."If you want to know whether she's staying or going, you can ask her."My mother opened one of the gift boxes. It was a brand-new set of art supplies."I bought you the best there is. Don't stay in someone else's house. Think how it looks."Inside

Chapter 5

I finally opened the school's email, the one I'd been too scared to read.Their answer was clear.My old offer of admission had expired. If I still wanted to go, I'd have to apply again.I read it twice, then turned to Salvatore, who was sitting across from me. "Could you ask them for me?"He offered to help me find the public contact information, but I'd have to confirm the details with the admissions office myself."You can't just get me back in?""No. Teaching there doesn't mean I get to decide admissions for a different school."I nodded and closed my laptop.A little while later, I opened it again.I knew better. But ever since I was little, my father had told me that enough money could open any door.This time, money wasn't the problem.But I was still a year late.That afternoon, my mother sent a video.The dining table at home was covered with my favorite dishes. My father said that if I came back, he'd find someone to sort things out with the school."Stop messing around out t

Chapter 6

Once I started painting again, I found out what that year had done to me.I could take apart engine parts, hold a cup, and dash off a quick sketch.But if I held a brush for too long, my knuckles locked up and my lines went crooked.I scraped my first new painting clean three times.When Livia came in, I was using my left hand to wipe the paint off my right.She didn't touch my painting. She just said there was an adjustable desk at her studio and asked if I wanted to try it."No, thanks.""Okay."And she really didn't bring it up again.Two days later, I heard her downstairs on the phone, talking about an open studio day that weekend.I assumed she wanted me to show my work.At dinner, I spoke first. "I'm not doing it. And I'm not going to hang old paintings and pretend this past year never happened."Livia put down her fork."I haven't invited you yet. If you don't want to come, then don't."Even after she'd said it, I was still waiting for the "but."Instead, she asked Salvatore if

Chapter 7

My father didn't wait for me to come home.Instead, he invented a reason for me to come back.A new line had been added to the invitations for the Costa family's reception. It read, "Nadia Costa, the eldest daughter, will return to the art world with her family's support and display her work."The photo attached was from my seventeenth birthday.Enzo texted me that this was them helping me save face. As long as I showed up, nobody would make an issue of how difficult I'd been lately.Then Ben called.Someone had come to the garage asking whether the repair work we'd done was really up to standard. A few longtime clients caught wind of it and put off picking up their cars and paying."Don't come back here to fight," Ben said. "That's exactly what they want. I've got the delivery records. I'll go through them with the clients one by one."I booked a ticket to Gray Harbor anyway.Some of the repair records were still at my old station, and I needed to go get them.I had to explain things

Chapter 8

A week before the reception, I returned to Gray Harbor. My mother heard I was at the garage and came looking for me.I was there to take a few more reference photos for my application portfolio and pick up my toolbox.She stood outside my station, one heel sunk into a shallow crack in the floor."There isn't even anywhere to sit in here?"Ben brought over a chair. She didn't sit.She looked at my hands first, then at the work schedule on the wall.July had a whole row of night shifts.In the bottom right corner was a note in my handwriting. "Deliver early. Collect payment by Friday."She looked at that line for a long time."That $20,000...""The money for your piano."She looked up. "It wasn't for me."I put down the rag."I know."Suddenly she went quiet.In the corner of my station was a metal bucket full of old cloth. I used to cut my old clothes into rags. The blue piece on top was from a shirt my mother had bought me.She recognized it, picked it up, then put it back."Why didn't

Chapter 9

When I got to the reception, my father was getting ready to give a speech.The photo on the invitation had been pulled, but Enzo was still waiting for me at the door with a ring box in his hand."Put it on before we go in. Everyone in there knows us."I walked past him without taking it.I'd asked Livia and Salvatore to come with me, and they'd agreed.My father saw me first. Only when he recognized the people behind me did he come over to shake hands.The first thing out of his mouth was Salvatore's title."Professor, thank you for looking after my daughter. Our family will take it from here.""Nadia has her own plans," Salvatore said.My father turned to me and lowered his voice. "Don't make a scene here. You want all these people to know you're living in someone else's house?""Yes. I live there."I didn't lower my voice.A few people nearby turned to look."They offered to fund my education after I'd given up my spot at school. I turned them down back then, because you told me our

Chapter 10

The Costa family didn't fall apart that day.People in Gray Harbor had too many business ties to my father. They weren't all going to walk away just because he'd hurt his daughter.But he couldn't bury it, either.After Ben gave the clients the repair records, one of them brought his car back and demanded that the man my father had sent show him exactly where these so-called quality problems were.After that, my father stopped interfering.Friends who used to lend him money as soon as he said "the family's short on cash" began asking what he needed it for. Enzo and Viola still appeared at events together. But no one could make me out to be the daughter who'd taken the money, thrown a fit, and was just waiting to come home.I heard all this from Ben, in bits and pieces.I didn't ask about it every day.The new admission decision came the following spring.I checked my name over and over before I turned my laptop toward Livia.Livia read it, and the first thing she did was ask if she cou

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