Chương 6
I suddenly wondered whether that performance had been for us or for herself.
“Barron offered to help?” I asked.
“I asked him.”
“So he took twenty thousand dollars from our savings without telling me.”
“He said you knew.”
My throat tightened.
“What exactly did he say?”
“That you two had talked about it and you were fine.”
Tony wrote another note.
Preserve this.
“I wasn’t fine because I didn’t know.”
Bruno’s voice softened.
“Adela, I swear to God, I thought you knew.”
I looked at the passing cars beyond the station parking lot.
A woman in running clothes stopped at the curb to retie her shoe.
A delivery van leaned on its horn at someone who had blocked an intersection.
The city continued doing ordinary things while my marriage quietly rearranged itself.
“Send me proof of the transfer.”
“What?”
“The date, amount, account it came from, anything Barron sent you about it.”
“I don’t want to get involved.”
“You are involved.”
“He’s my brother.”
“And I’m your sister-in-law.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
I looked at my mother’s swollen cheek.
“It clearly isn’t.”
Bruno said my name, but I ended the call.
For several seconds, none of us spoke.
Then my mother said, “Twenty thousand.”
Tony put the page back into the folder.
“One transfer potentially explained.”
“Potentially?”
“We have his statement, not documents.”
“He sounded guilty.”
“Guilt is not documentation.”
“I hate lawyers.”
“I’m aware.”
My phone buzzed again.
Bruno had sent a screenshot.
It showed an incoming transfer of exactly $20,000 from an account ending in 4471.
The same account that had received the money from our joint savings.
Tony took the phone from me.
“That matters.”
“So Barron moved money from our savings into another account, then paid Bruno from there.”
“That’s what this screenshot suggests.”
“Why?”
“To make it look separate?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you stop saying maybe?”
“No.”
My mother stood.
“I need breakfast.”
We both stared at her.
“What?”
She adjusted her purse over her shoulder.
“I had half a banana yesterday afternoon and then your husband slapped me.”
She pointed toward the corner.
“There is a diner.”
Tony looked at me.
“Food is a surprisingly good legal strategy.”
We crossed the street.
The diner had cracked red booths, chrome-edged tables, and a waitress who called everybody honey regardless of age.
Mom ordered scrambled eggs and rye toast.
Tony ordered oatmeal, which she openly judged him for.
I ordered coffee and forgot to order food until the waitress came back.
While Tony answered an email, Mom spread grape jelly over her toast with methodical care.
“Your father hid money once.”
I looked at her.
Tony stopped typing.
“What?”
“Four hundred dollars.”
“When?”
“1998.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I thought I would kill him.”
She took a bite.
Tony leaned back slightly.
“What happened?”
“He wanted to buy a fishing boat.”
I stared.
“Dad hated fishing.”
“He liked the idea of fishing.”
That sounded exactly like him.
“He put twenty dollars aside every week and hid it in an old toolbox.”
“How did you find it?”
“I needed a screwdriver.”
“Did you leave him?”
“No.”
She looked at me over the rim of her coffee cup.
“He had hidden four hundred dollars, not seventy-nine thousand, and he had not hit my mother.”
“I know.”
“I am not telling you what to do.”
“You’re absolutely telling me what to do.”
“Then perhaps I am telling you badly.”
She buttered another piece of toast.
“Your father admitted it before I finished yelling.”
The simple sentence hurt more than I expected.
Barron had not admitted anything.
He had accused.
Threatened.
Redirected.
And while I slept beside my mother in a hotel, he had begun telling his family that I was the thief.
Tony’s phone rang.
He looked at the screen and stood.
“I need to take this.”
He stepped outside.
My mother watched him through the window.
“Do you trust him?”
“Tony?”
“Yes.”
“With legal things.”
“That is not what I asked.”
I folded the paper wrapper from my straw into smaller and smaller rectangles.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She drank her coffee.
“You need someone you trust because you are going to keep wanting Barron to explain this in a way that lets you go home.”
I looked up sharply.
She did not apologize for seeing me too clearly.
“You think I should divorce him.”
“I think he hit me.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I think he took money without telling you.”
“Still not an answer.”
She set down her cup.
“I think you are waiting for me to tell you to leave your husband so that later, if you miss him, you can be angry with me instead of yourself.”
Heat rose into my face.
“That’s unfair.”
“Yes.”
She picked up her toast.
“It is also true.”
I stared toward the window.
Tony was pacing outside with the phone pressed to his ear.
I hated my mother for almost thirty seconds.
Then I hated myself for hating her.
“I do miss him,” I said.
She chewed slowly.
“I know.”
“I’m furious with him.”
“I know that too.”
“I don’t understand how those can happen at the same time.”
“They happen all the time.”
She wiped jelly from her thumb.
“Marriage would be much easier if love disappeared the moment someone behaved terribly.”
Tony returned several minutes later with an expression I did not like.
“What?”
He sat down without touching his oatmeal.
“That was the bank.”
“You called them?”
“I had you authorize me to speak with them when you sent the documents this morning.”
I had signed so many electronic forms before leaving the hotel that I barely remembered.
“And?”
“They cannot disclose the owner of the external account to me.”
“Of course.”
“But they confirmed the external account was added to your joint banking profile on June ninth.”
Three days before the first transfer.
“By Barron?”
“They won’t tell me that yet.”
I leaned back.
May you like
“What can they tell us?”
“The verification was completed through online banking.”
