Chương 6
Nineteen thousand two hundred dollars.
Not counting whatever he meant by about.
Not counting furniture or repairs or anything else hidden inside the word helping.
I pressed my fingertips against the edge of the kitchen island.
“Why are you paying eight hundred dollars a month toward your mother’s condo?”
Daniel looked toward the stairs.
Jason and Alyssa were still packing.
We could hear drawers opening above us.
“My mom bought it as an investment.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“She needed help with the carrying costs.”
“Why?”
“The renter moved out.”
“For two years?”
“No.”
“Then why are you still paying?”
Daniel’s face tightened.
Melissa watched him with an expression that told me she knew there was another answer.
I turned toward her.
“What?”
She shook her head.
“Ask him.”
“I am asking him.”
Daniel’s voice dropped.
“Jason stayed there sometimes.”
I looked toward the ceiling.
“What do you mean?”
“When things were bad between him and Melissa.”
Melissa stiffened.
“Don’t you dare make this about me.”
“He would call me after you two fought.”
“He was fifteen.”
“And sometimes he didn’t want to go home.”
“You told me he was staying with you.”
“He was staying with me.”
“At the condo?”
“Sometimes.”
I looked at Daniel.
“You were sleeping there with him?”
A long silence answered first.
“Sometimes.”
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
“Rachel.”
“Try.”
“Maybe ten.”
Melissa laughed once.
“Ten?”
Daniel glared at her.
“Stay out of this.”
“You spent almost every Tuesday and Thursday there for three months.”
I turned toward him.
His face told me Melissa was closer to the truth.
A memory returned with painful precision.
Daniel had gone through a stretch the previous summer when he claimed work was chaos.
Late client dinners.
Early site meetings.
A vendor problem in Mesa.
He had come home after ten more than once, tired and irritable, and I had apologized for asking where he had been because he made the question sound like distrust.
“Were you at the condo all those nights?”
“Not all.”
“How many?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You remember enough to lie about them.”
“I wasn’t lying.”
“You told me you were working.”
“Sometimes I was.”
“From a condo?”
“I had my laptop.”
I stared at him.
“That’s your defense?”
“No.”
“Then what is?”
He looked exhausted suddenly.
Not guilty in the dramatic way people look guilty in movies.
Just cornered.
Small.
Ashamed.
“I didn’t know how to tell you Jason didn’t want to be here.”
The words hurt in a completely different place.
I looked toward the stairs again.
“Here?”
Daniel nodded.
“With us?”
“He said it felt weird.”
My throat tightened.
“Because of me?”
“Partly.”
“Because of Olivia and Ethan?”
Daniel didn’t answer.
Melissa did.
“He didn’t like sharing his father.”
Daniel snapped toward her.
“That is not what he said.”
“It’s what he told me.”
“And you encouraged it.”
“You disappeared into your new family.”
“I saw my kids constantly.”
“You saw them according to a calendar.”
“Because you fought me every time I asked for more time.”
“Oh, please.”
Their voices were rising again.
I barely heard them.
The condo had changed something fundamental.
Not because Daniel had another place.
Not because of the money.
Because he had built a second version of our family somewhere I had never been allowed to see.
One where Jason could have his father without me.
Without Olivia.
Without Ethan.
Without the house he apparently believed belonged to Daniel.
“How did Alyssa fit into this?” I asked.
They stopped arguing.
Daniel looked at me.
“She stayed there a couple times too.”
“Did she know it was your mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“Did Jason?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did neither of them ever mention it?”
Daniel looked toward the stairs.
“Because I asked them not to.”
The sentence was quiet.
It was also devastating.
I stepped away from the island.
“You asked your children to keep a secret from me.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be a secret.”
“What would you call information everyone knows except one person?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
He had no answer.
Melissa leaned against the back of a dining chair.
For the first time since she arrived, she looked uncomfortable rather than combative.
I wondered how much pleasure she had expected from exposing Daniel and how quickly it had curdled now that she could see what the truth actually did.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
A notification from our bank appeared.
Automatic payment scheduled for tomorrow.
Eight hundred dollars.
The recipient name was C. Carter Property LLC.
I stared at it.
Daniel followed my eyes.
“Oh God.”
I picked up the phone.
“You have this coming from our joint account.”
“It’s my contribution.”
“No.”
I held the screen toward him.
“This is from our household checking.”
“I put money into that account.”
“So do I.”
“I cover more than eight hundred in deposits.”
“That is not how joint money works.”
“I know.”
“Apparently you don’t.”
Melissa straightened.
“I didn’t know Rachel was paying for it.”
Daniel turned on her.
“She wasn’t.”
I laughed.
“Then whose eight hundred dollars leaves the account tomorrow?”
“Rachel, I contribute thirty-five hundred a month.”
“And we use that for mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance, school costs, and everything else in this house.”
“I know.”
“You cannot mentally color eight hundred dollars blue and declare it yours after it goes into a joint account.”
His face flushed.
“I wasn’t trying to steal from you.”
“I didn’t say steal.”
“You’re making it sound like I did.”
“I’m making it sound like you hid an expense.”
“Yes.”
The blunt answer stopped me.
Daniel swallowed.
“I hid it.”
Melissa looked down.
I could hear a zipper upstairs.
Someone dragged a suitcase across the floor.
Daniel continued before I could speak.
“I hid it because every time Jason came here angry, you tried harder.”
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“You bought things.”
“I bought things for all the kids.”
“You tried to make it comfortable.”
May you like
“Of course I did.”
“And he hated that.”
