Chương 2
Eleanor lowered the deed slowly.
“What forty thousand dollars?”
Julian did not answer.
His face had gone gray in a way I had never seen before, and for one brief, irrational moment I was afraid he was going to faint.
Darcy moved a dining chair out with her foot.
“Sit down if you need to.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
Eleanor stepped closer to him.
“Julian, what is she talking about?”
He looked at me instead.
“Sloan, can we do this privately?”
“No.”
His mouth tightened.
“This is between us.”
“You brought your mother into our kitchen yesterday to help demand twenty-eight thousand dollars from me.”
“That’s not what happened.”
Eleanor turned sharply.
“It is exactly what happened.”
Julian stared at her.
She seemed almost as surprised by her own interruption as he was.
Then she set the deed down.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“You told me the money was available.”
“It is available.”
Saying it aloud appeared to make him hear how bad it sounded.
He corrected himself.
“I mean, we have money.”
“No,” I said.
“I have money.”
Eleanor inhaled through her nose.
Ordinarily that sentence would have offended her.
This time she said nothing.
Julian looked at Darcy.
“Is she advising you to talk to me like this?”
Darcy folded her hands on the table.
“Sloan has been talking to you without my assistance for seven years.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because she asked me to be.”
He turned back to me.
“You’re making this hostile.”
I almost laughed.
Yesterday, he had struck a countertop hard enough to send boiling tea across me and ordered me out of a house I owned.
Now hostility had apparently arrived carrying a leather briefcase.
I slid the statements toward him.
“Four withdrawals.”
His gaze flickered downward.
“Where did they go?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Then simplify it.”
“I can’t.”
Eleanor reached for the statements.
Julian put his hand over them.
“Mom, please.”
She stared at his fingers.
“Move your hand.”
“Not now.”
“Move it.”
Something in her voice changed.
The decorative softness disappeared.
Julian lifted his hand.
Eleanor read the first page.
Then the second.
Her lips moved slightly as she added the numbers.
“You took forty thousand dollars?”
“Borrowed.”
“From whom?”
He said nothing.
I answered.
“From our emergency fund.”
Eleanor looked at me.
Then at him.
“You said you and Sloan were doing extremely well.”
“We are.”
“No, she is.”
The words landed harder than anything I could have said.
Julian pushed away from the table.
“This is unbelievable.”
Darcy watched him.
“What is?”
“All of you sitting here like I stole something.”
“You transferred joint funds without discussing it with your wife,” Darcy said.
“I had access.”
“I didn’t say you committed a crime.”
He stopped.
Darcy continued.
“I said you transferred joint funds without discussing it with your wife.”
Julian shoved both hands into his pockets.
He had always hated precise language when precision worked against him.
I pulled out the credit-card records.
“And there’s this.”
He saw the jeweler first.
Eleanor saw the hotel.
Her eyes moved to me with immediate comprehension.
“Oh.”
I hated the pity in that one syllable.
“Don’t,” I said.
“I wasn’t—”
“Please.”
She nodded.
Julian’s cheeks flushed.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
The oldest sentence in the guilty person’s handbook.
I waited anyway.
“Then tell me what it is.”
He walked to the kitchen window.
Outside, the neighbor with the golden retriever was dragging two trash cans toward his garage.
The dog trotted behind him with the same tennis ball in its mouth.
Julian stared at that ordinary little scene as though an answer might be hidden in it.
“The hotels weren’t for me.”
I felt Darcy look at me.
I kept my eyes on Julian.
“Who were they for?”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“A client.”
Eleanor laughed once.
It was not amused.
“What sort of client needs you to buy jewelry?”
“That’s separate.”
“Of course it is.”
“Mom.”
“No, apparently I have spent the last year being an idiot, so I would like the courtesy of being fully informed now.”
Julian turned from the window.
“You’re not an idiot.”
“You told me the house belonged to you.”
“I said I handled the house.”
“You let me praise you for paying for it.”
His face hardened.
“I was trying to keep some dignity.”
I felt something sharp move through me.
That, at least, sounded true.
Three years earlier, after his company failed, Julian had stopped sleeping.
He would lie beside me until two or three in the morning, then get up and wander downstairs.
For months, he wore suits to meetings that did not exist because he could not bear the idea of the neighbors seeing him home on a Tuesday.
I had known he was ashamed.
I had not known shame could survive long enough to become entitlement.
Eleanor crossed her arms.
“You could have told me Sloan saved the house.”
Julian’s eyes flashed.
“She didn’t save it.”
The room went still.
He heard himself.
I did too.
Darcy looked at the tabletop.
Eleanor’s expression altered almost imperceptibly.
“Then who did?”
Julian had no answer.
I picked up the deed.
“I’m not interested in humiliating you.”
He gave me a bitter smile.
“That ship sailed.”
“No.”
I felt my voice shake and hated that it did.
“You humiliated yourself.”
Darcy glanced toward me.
I knew immediately the sentence was cruel.
Worse, I knew I had meant it.
Julian flinched.
I almost apologized.
Then I looked at the faint red mark on my wrist.
The apology stayed where it was.
He dragged a chair back and sat.
For the first time that morning, he seemed smaller than the room.
“The forty thousand is tied up.”
“Tied up where?”
“A business.”
“What business?”
“A medical staffing platform.”
Darcy’s eyebrows rose.
Julian saw it.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a face.”
May you like
“I have a face.”
Despite everything, Eleanor almost smiled.
