I have to be careful here, because what they did to Clara is hard to write.
It was Penelope. My sister.
Penelope had a lifestyle she couldn’t afford — the manicures, the perfume, the gold bracelet, the appetite for looking wealthy that had always run through her. While I was away, she’d borrowed heavily from dangerous people, gambling and spending, certain she’d figure it out.
She didn’t figure it out. The debt grew. The collectors came.
And Penelope, faced with dangerous men and a sum she couldn’t pay, did the most monstrous thing I can imagine: she pointed at Clara.
She told the collectors that her sister-in-law was good for it — that Clara had access to my Army pay, my savings, my benefits. She forged Clara’s name on documents. She’d been quietly building a paper trail for months, promissory notes with Clara’s forged signature, so that when it all collapsed, the debt would appear to be Clara’s.
