“Some of it was ours.”
“Some.”
“Yes.”
“And the rest was mine.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
That was when something finally made sense.
The Gucci bag.
The dinners.
The manicures.
The constant packages.
The irritated expression whenever I asked practical questions.
Sloan had not been living temporarily in my house.
She had been maintaining a lifestyle she could no longer afford.
And Harrison had been helping her pretend nothing had changed.
“How much debt do you two have?”
I asked.
His silence deepened.
I felt my stomach drop.
“Harrison.”
“We’re behind.”
“On what?”
“Cards.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You know.”
“Mom—”
“How much?”
“About twenty-six.”
I thought I had misunderstood.
“Twenty-six hundred?”
“Thousand.”
I sat back.
Twenty-six thousand dollars of credit card debt.
Almost eighteen thousand from the emergency account.
Free housing for eleven months.
And Sloan wanted me to reimburse her for a handbag.
I laughed.
It came out strangely.
“Mom?”
“No.”
“What?”
“No more.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I said I know.”
“No, Harrison.
You still think this conversation is about money.”
He didn’t respond.
“It isn’t.”
I looked around the dining room.
The chandelier Daniel installed.
The table where Harrison had done homework.
The wall where I had marked his height as a child until he begged me to stop.
“This is about the fact that I stopped feeling safe in my own home because I was trying to make your marriage comfortable.”
“Mom, that’s not fair.”
There it was again.
Not fair.
I almost admired how quickly he reached for it.
“What part?”
“Sloan didn’t force you to—”
“Be careful.”
He stopped.
“You can defend your wife,” I said.
“You should defend your wife when she deserves defending.
But do not rewrite what happened in my home.”
I heard him breathing.
Then, softly, he said, “She thinks you hate her.”
I looked at the statements.
“I don’t hate Sloan.”
“Then why—”
“I no longer trust her.”
“That’s basically the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.
Hate is emotional.
Trust is practical.”
He had no answer.
I continued.
“Your access to the emergency account has been removed.”
“What?”
“I froze the card.”
“Mom, we need—”
“You have jobs.”
“She’s between jobs right now.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course she was.
Sloan had left her latest position six weeks earlier because, according to her, the office was “toxic.”
Before that, another job had been “a bad fit.”
Before that, her supervisor “had an issue with confident women.”
I had never criticized her employment history.
I had learned what happened when I asked questions.
“How much money is in your checking account?”
I asked.
“That’s not your business.”
I smiled without humor.
“Exactly.”
Silence.
Then I heard him say something I would remember for the rest of my life.
“She told me you wouldn’t really miss it.”
For a second, I could not speak.
“What?”
He realized too late what he had admitted.
“Mom—”
“Say it again.”
“She just meant—”
“Say it again.”
“She said you had plenty saved.”
I stared at Daniel’s empty chair across the table.
Plenty.
That word told me more about Sloan than all the arguments of the previous year.
Not because she knew how much I had.
She didn’t.
Because she believed whatever I had was available to her if she could justify wanting it.
And worse—
My son had listened.
“Come home,” I said.
“Mom—”
“Alone.”
“Sloan will—”
“Alone, Harrison.”
I ended the call.
Then I sat at the table surrounded by yellow marks and waited for my son to come home and finally tell me the truth.
CHAPTER 2: WHAT CAME AFTER OOPS
Harrison arrived forty-three minutes later.