Penelope was charged. Forgery, fraud, conspiracy, and her role in the assault. The debt was proven to be hers, incurred in her name through her spending, fraudulently transferred onto Clara through documents that didn’t survive thirty seconds of real scrutiny. The loan sharks themselves became a police matter — Clara’s notebook, it turned out, had documented enough about the men who came to the house to be genuinely useful to investigators who’d been wanting a reason to move on them.
My mother faced consequences too. She’d been an active participant — in the forgery, in the staging, in allowing the assault. The law does not exempt you from a conspiracy because you’re someone’s mother.
I want to tell you I struggled with that. That some part of me wanted to protect my mother.
