Checkout Counter Confession: The Stranger Who Used My Name

Chapter 4 The Foundation

The foundation was called the Vance-Pruitt Family Foundation, and it had been founded by my father and his partner, Gordon Pruitt, thirty-one years ago, the year I was born. It gave money to libraries and conservation projects and a scholarship program for rural students, and it had a board of directors that included my mother, Gordon Pruitt, Gordon's son, and me, in a seat I had never once sat in.

I read the founding documents on the flight home. Then I called in sick the next day and read them again, all afternoon, at my kitchen table, with a pad of paper and a pencil and the blinds drawn.

What I found made me cold.

The foundation's founding documents gave voting control to the founder with the largest share. My father had held fifty-one percent. When he died, his share had passed to the trust. The trust, Marielle had said, was structured so its assets went to her, and then to me. But the trust was irrevocable only as long as the foundation remained in family hands. If control of the foundation passed out of the family, the trust was void and its assets went into the foundation's general endowment, which was controlled by the board.

Gordon Pruitt was eighty-one years old and had been trying to buy control of the foundation for a decade. My mother had been blocking him with my father's shares. But my mother, according to the documents, held those shares as trustee, not as owner. If the trust was voided, she held nothing. If Gordon bought control before the trust's next review, which was scheduled for January, he would own the foundation and the trust's assets would be absorbed.

Marielle would lose everything. So would I, though I had more to lose and less to care about.

The doorbell rang at seven. I opened the door to my sister, Claire, holding a bottle of wine and a pizza and wearing the expression of a woman who had heard a rumor.

"You're home sick," she said, walking past me into the kitchen. "You're never home sick. And you didn't post anything about a wedding. And Mom called me and asked if I had heard from you."

"You talked to Mom."

"She's worried. She said you asked about Marielle."

I didn't say anything. Claire put the wine on the counter and turned to face me, and her face was the face of my sister, older, sharper, the one who had always been the family's translator, the girl who smoothed things over.

"Kate. What did you do."

"Who is Gordon Pruitt to you?" I asked.

Claire's face flickered. "He's Dad's partner. He sends me a check every Christmas. Why?"

"What's the check for?"

"Loyalty," she said. "He does the same for Mom. He's done it for years." She frowned. "Why are you asking about Gordon Pruitt?"

I told her. Not all of it. The handbag, the card, the meeting in Coral Gables. Not the memo in my bag. Not the DNA test. I watched her face as I talked, and I watched it go from annoyance to confusion to something I didn't like, something careful, cautious, the look of a person deciding where her loyalties were.

"She's lying," Claire said. "She has to be. She's a con woman, Kate. She forged your name. She bought an eleven-thousand-dollar handbag. You said it yourself."

"She's our sister."

"She's a stranger with a DNA test she probably faked." Claire picked up the wine bottle and then set it down again, hard. "Mom wants you to come to dinner Sunday. She wants to explain everything."

"Then why did she forge a bank memo telling my account manager not to tell me?"

Claire went very still.

"There's a memo," I said. "With her handwriting on it. She knew a card had been printed in my name and she told the bank to handle it internally. She didn't tell me. She didn't tell you. She knew, Claire. She knew Marielle existed, and she knew someone was using my name, and she buried it."

Claire's voice came out smaller than I'd heard it since we were children. "What are you going to do?"

"Sunday dinner," I said. "I'll be there. But I'm not coming alone."

Claire looked at me for a long moment, then picked up her purse and her wine and left without saying goodbye. I stood in the kitchen and listened to her car pull out of the driveway, and I did not cry, because I had a folder named VANCE and a hearing to prepare for, and there was no room in my chest for crying.

I texted Marielle.

Me: Sunday. You're coming to dinner.

Marielle: With you?

Me: With me. Bring the DNA test.

Marielle: Your mother is going to hate this.

Me: She's going to hate a lot of things.

I put my phone down and did something I hadn't done in a long time. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, where I kept the one thing of my father's I had kept for myself, and I took out his old letter opener, plain silver, worn smooth at the handle, and I laid it on the table next to the folder, and I sat looking at both of them until the light outside turned from blue to black.