Free Source One by Allyson Simonian Page A

had in the garage and a good deal of her mother’s furniture.
    She was only moving a bed, a dresser and a sofa to the new apartment. Amber would fill in what she needed from there.
    Two hours later, they were finished. Amber insisted on taking Nicole and Rick out to lunch at a Mexican restaurant she knew of near the apartment.
    They sat with beers after they’d finished their entrees.
    “What do you do, Rick?”
    “I work in a bank, managing merchant services.”
    Amber raised an eyebrow in question.
    “Credit cards,” Nicole said.
    Amber nodded. “At what bank?”
    “Cal Coast.”
    Amber drew in a breath. Of all the banks…
    After Nicole and Rick dropped her off, Amber went back to her mother’s house and took a last look around. With a heavy heart, she left her keys on the kitchen counter and drove back to her apartment.
    She spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking boxes and organizing everything into her new kitchen, bath and closets.
    By early evening, she’d finished.
    Amber had placed her mother’s journals on her nightstand.
    That night, she picked up the second journal and climbed into bed. She turned to a page toward the back.
    She was too sad to read her mother’s last couple of entries. But this one had been dated while her mother had still been in treatment, with hope of remission.
     
    I know it was wrong, but I planned to pay him back. When I felt better. When I went back to work.
    It’s been so long since I’ve worked. So long since we’ve had an income.
    I don’t want to lose this house. I’ve dreamed of Amber bringing her own family here for holidays one day.
    Amber……she insists on taking the blame. She knows her father won’t let them prosecute her.
    What kind of mother am I to let her do that? Yet, as worried as I am of the repercussions for her, I’m so afraid of being given a sentence myself.
    Despite all the bad, I’ve been blessed with the most amazing daughter. The house, money, everything else means nothing in comparison. I am so thankful for her.
     
    Amber smoothed her hand over the page and blinked back tears.
    She and her mother had hardly discussed what had happened.
    She’d already known that her mother had acted out of desperation. Yet reading her mother’s explanation was comforting.
    “I’m settled in my new place, Mom,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter that I had to sell the house. I have all our memories.”
    Amber set the journal down and turned out the lights.
    ***
    “Brian, what’s going on? Katie said she hasn’t seen Amber in a long time.”
    Brian’s stomach clenched as he listened to his mother on the phone. She had just returned to Boston from an extended vacation in Europe.
    He explained what had happened.
    His mother was silent on the other end as he finished.
    “It just doesn’t sound right,” she said after a few seconds. “Amber doesn’t strike me as the type to do something like that.”
    Brian looked at the ceiling and shook his head. “Yet she did.”
    Brian lay in bed later that night. Hands laced behind his neck, he stared up at the ceiling. His mother was right to be shocked. So was Mrs. Quinn for that matter.
    Despite his efforts to shut Amber out of his thoughts, something had nagged at Brian these last weeks.
    The look in Amber’s eyes as she’d denied having anything to do with the money transfer.
    Could she have been telling the truth?
    But if she hadn’t done it, who had? Who had framed her? And why? It made no sense.
    Brian’s chest constricted as he remembered what it had been like to wake up next to Amber.  What it had felt like to hold her tightly in his arms.
    ***
    On Friday evening, Amber picked up her mother’s earlier journal and got into bed. She opened to the first entry, which had been written six months after her father left.
     
    He called tonight to speak to Amber. We were civil. For the first time in a long time.
    We fought so often. Maybe, as he says, it’s for the best.
    These have been the