Chapter 10: The Demand Letter
Tara called my dad three times the next morning before the letter arrived.
He let the first two go to voicemail.
On the third call, he answered.
I was in the kitchen when it happened.
I didn't move.
"I know," he said into the phone.
"I know you want to talk." A pause.
"Tara, I need you to wait until you receive something in the mail today.
Read it.
Then we'll talk." Another pause, longer this time.
"Because there's nothing to discuss until you've read it.
That's why."
He hung up.
He stood at the counter for a moment with his hand still on the phone.
Then he poured himself a second cup of coffee and sat down at the table across from me.
"She wants to come home," he said.
"What did you say?"
"I said wait for the letter."
The letter arrived by courier at eleven-fifteen.
My dad signed for it and set it on the table without opening it, even though Patricia had sent him the same text by email the night before.
It felt important that the physical copy go to Tara unopened.
He texted her the tracking number.
At two-seventeen, his phone rang again.
This time, I heard her voice even from across the room.
Not the words — just the pitch of it.
High and tight and trying to stay controlled.
"Tara," my dad said.
"Let me finish." He waited.
"I know it's a large number.
That's because it's the actual number.
Gary pulled every transaction." He listened.
"No, he didn't make a mistake." He listened again.
"Tara, stop.
I'm going to say this once.
Patricia drafted that letter.
You have thirty days to respond.
If you want to talk about repayment terms, you talk to her.
If you want to dispute the amount, you talk to her.
That's what she's there for."
A pause.
"Because I'm not your negotiating partner right now," he said.
"I'm the person you took it from."
He ended the call.
I looked at him across the table.
"She's going to fight it," I said.
"Maybe," he said.
"Or maybe she's scared enough to settle." He turned his coffee cup in his hands.
"Patricia said the response will tell us everything."
The response came four days later — not through a lawyer, not through Patricia's office, but through a handwritten letter that arrived in our mailbox addressed to my dad in Tara's handwriting.
He read it at the kitchen table while I sat across from him.
When he finished, he set it down and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"What does it say?" I said.
He slid it across to me.
*David — I know I have no right to ask for anything.
But I'm asking anyway.
I don't have thirty-seven thousand dollars.
I don't have a fraction of it.
Marcus spent most of it and I have no way to recover what he took.
I made a terrible mistake and I have been trying to find a way to fix it for months.
I know that's not enough.
I know nothing I say is enough.
But I'm asking you not to involve the police.
I'm asking you to let me repay what I can, over time, on a schedule we agree on.
I will sign anything.
I will give up any claim to the house or the joint assets.
I just need you not to make this criminal.
I'm asking you as someone who did love you, even when I was making the worst decisions of my life.*
I read it twice.
"She's asking you to protect her," I said.
"Yes," my dad said.
"After she tried to throw me out of my own house."
He looked at me carefully.
"I know."
"What are you going to do?"
He picked up his phone.
Dialed Patricia's number.
May you like
"I got her response," he said when she answered.
"I'm going to need your advice on something."
