"That's... the financials are more complicated than—" "They're not complicated," Travis said. "They're simple. They're the simplest thing in the world."
"A man who's scared of looking poor will do anything, hurt anyone, spend money he doesn't have just to avoid being seen the way he saw me today. You laid off 11 people and bought a Rolls-Royce in the same quarter. That's not complicated, son. That's just sad."
Vanessa, who had been silent, suddenly spoke. "That's not fair. You don't know what we've been through. You don't know the pressure."
"The pressure?" Travis repeated. "To maintain a certain... a certain standing," Vanessa said. Even as the words came out, she seemed to hear how they sounded.
"People expect things. Our friends, our... There are expectations. You don't keep a Rolls because you're vain. You keep it because the day you sell it, everyone knows."
"Everyone knows you're slipping. And once they smell blood..." She stopped. For the first time, Travis looked at her with something other than coldness.
Something almost like understanding, which was worse because it came with pity. "You're right," Travis said quietly. "I don't know your pressure. I know a different one."
"I know what it's like to have nothing and be looked at like nothing. You know what it's like to have everything and be terrified of losing the way people look at you." He shook his head slowly. "Lady, that's a prison."
"You built yourself a prison out of other people's eyes, and you've been living in it so long you think the bars are the walls of a mansion." He paused. "I almost feel sorry for you. Almost."
"Right up until the part where you waved your hand in front of your nose and called a stranger poor to make your friends laugh." Vanessa flinched like she'd been slapped. Then, to the surprise of everyone, most of all herself, she started to cry. Not the performance tears from before.
Real ones. Ugly ones. The kind that come when somebody names the thing you've been hiding from your whole life. "I didn't used to be like this," she said, and her voice broke on it.
"I grew up in a town smaller than this parking lot. I waitressed. I... I know what it's like to be the one people look through." She wiped her face, smearing makeup.
"And the second I had money, I became the worst version of the people who used to look through me. I know that. I've known it for years, and I hate it. I hate..." She couldn't finish.
Ethan stared at his wife like he'd never seen her before. "Vanessa—" "Shut up, Ethan." She didn't even look at him. "Just for one minute in your life, shut up."