One Digit Short

Susan squeezed a smile.

“Don’t encourage Summer. You all know me. I’ve always been fair to my children.

“I’ll tell catering to get us more food.”

Susan rose to her feet to leave the room.

Summer stopped her, her arms spread apart. “Are you trying to run away? Why are you scared?”

Susan chuckled awkwardly. “I swapped my phone recently and lost all my phone data. I don’t have the chat logs anymore. There’s no way to check the transactions even if I wanted to.

“Tell you what. I’ll send you twenty grand—”

Summer cut Susan off with a smirk.

“Don’t try to shut me up with just twenty grand. I bet you funneled much more than that into Macie’s pockets.

“Besides, it’s not about the money. I just want justice.”

With her words striking hard, Sam’s wife, Kendra, led the applause.

“Attagirl!

“Speak up about all the hurt. We got your back.”

Looking thrilled, Kendra held her phone up to capture the spectacle.

She was an influencer with around twenty thousand followers on a reel platform.

It took me a second to catch on to what Kendra was trying to do.

Sure enough, I checked Kendra’s social media handle using my alternative account and found that she was live. Nevertheless, she had only a handful of viewers so far.

Displeased with the low viewer count, Kendra egged the other family members on to stir up more drama.

With the family behind her, Summer straightened her back and felt assured.

She spoke aloud, “You talk about being fair to both of us, but in truth, you favor Macie in secret. Do you think I’m blind?

“Today, I’m finally standing up for myself.”

Susan looked at me pleadingly, expecting me to step in and intervene.

I sighed to myself.

Though Susan’s behavior let me down, this was ultimately a private family matter.

It was one thing to air our dirty laundry in front of family, but the stakes had shifted now that Kendra was livestreaming the conflict.

With Kendra and the family stirring the pot, the live broadcast’s viewer count shot up.

I refused to let our family matters be her clickbait or allow strangers who knew nothing to comment.

Hence, I interrupted Summer abruptly. “We’ll talk at home. For now, let’s just enjoy dinner.”

I gave her a look, but the message went over Summer’s head.

She scoffed. “As a vested party, you have no say here.

“Am I wrong to ask to be treated fairly?

“You and Mom are going to deny the favoritism back home anyway, so it’s in my best interest to get answers right here, right now.”

Susan’s grimace grew as Summer refused to relent.

Struck by a thought, Susan got a grip on herself.

She looked up and met my gaze. “Macie, it’s unfair to Summer that I bankrolled you by having you run errands for me.”

Taken aback, I was ready to question her claim when Susan went on.

“The transaction records are gone. It’s hard to keep track of the different bills anyway.

“But I reckon I have financed you to the tune of two hundred thousand dollars throughout the years.

“Why don’t you just pay Summer a hundred thousand dollars, and we’ll call it a day?”