Chương 7
“Online passwords?”
“No.”
Amy looked at him.
Connor corrected himself. “She knew an old password. I changed it.”
“When?”
“Last year.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. “She logged into my email.”
Ortiz waited.
“She wanted receipts showing what I’d spent from the money she gave me.”
Amy lowered the shirt she was folding. “You never told me that.”
“I changed the password.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
The detective stepped out, giving them privacy without announcing it.
Connor sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t think she would do this.”
“You didn’t think because thinking would mean fighting with her.”
“That’s not fair.”
Amy’s laugh was tired. “No. It’s not.”
He stood. “I was working. I was trying to keep us ahead. Every time she came over, you told me it was fine.”
“I learned which answer ended the conversation.”
“I asked you.”
“You asked from job sites. You asked while somebody was calling your name in the background. You asked when you already needed the answer to be fine.”
Connor walked to the window. In the yard, a balloon had burst and wrapped itself around the fence.
He said, “I don’t know how to fix what I didn’t see.”
Amy zipped the suitcase. “Start by not making blindness sound accidental.”
They left the house separately. Amy rode with Nina, who had offered to take her and Frederick to a medical follow-up. Connor drove to work because staying near Amy while she did not want him near her was becoming another form of pressure.
At the construction office, Malik handed him a hard hat and said, “You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“The drainage note was wrong.”
Connor stopped.
“Not catastrophic,” Malik added. “Priya corrected the slope. But you used the old elevation.”
Connor opened the file on his computer. Malik was right. The error was obvious.
“I’ll call the subcontractor.”
“Already done.”
Connor stared at the screen.
Malik closed the office door. “Go home.”
“I can work.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“I need the hours.”
“You’re salaried.”
“I need the project.”
“You have the project.”
Connor looked at him.
Malik leaned against the filing cabinet. “I’m going to say something you won’t like. Your family emergency doesn’t erase your responsibilities here, but showing up unable to read numbers isn’t responsibility. Take two days. Then we discuss what you can safely handle.”
Connor’s anger arrived too quickly. “Priya makes one correction and suddenly I’m unsafe?”
“No. You make a mistake while your kid is in the hospital and your mother is arrested, then pretend you’re unaffected. That’s unsafe.”
Connor shut the laptop harder than necessary.
Malik did not react. “Bring the computer home if holding it makes you feel useful.”
Connor left it.
In the parking lot, he listened to another voicemail from Teresa.
This one was softer.
“I know you’re upset. I also know you have always carried more than you should. Your father left me with a mess, and I made choices to protect you. Maybe I handled yesterday badly. Amy was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed. But you know what sixty-five thousand dollars meant to me. You know what you promised. Call me before lawyers turn this into something none of us can undo.”
Connor listened twice.
The promise she meant had not been about ownership.
A week after his father’s funeral, Teresa sat in Connor’s truck and said she feared running out of money. Connor had told her, “You’ll always have a place with me. I won’t let you lose everything.”
At the time, it meant he would help.
Teresa had turned it into a deed.
Or perhaps Connor had allowed the meaning to remain vague because vagueness postponed the moment when love became arithmetic.
He drove to a bank and requested records of every transfer he had made to Teresa. The employee said older statements would take time. Connor sat at a small desk beneath a poster advertising home loans and filled out forms.
His pen stopped over the line labeled Purpose of request.
He wrote family dispute.
Then he crossed it out and wrote accounting.
That evening, Amy agreed to meet him in the hotel lobby rather than the room. Frederick sat on her lap wearing a new romper from the hospital gift shop. His fever was lower. He chewed one corner of a cardboard picture book.
Connor placed a folder of his own on the table.
“I need to tell you about the money.”
Amy looked at the folder but did not touch it.
He explained the gift, the later accusations, the payments, the email access, and the promise after his father’s death. He did not make the story cleaner. He admitted he had suspected Teresa wanted leverage. He admitted that he avoided discussing it with Amy because he feared Amy would insist on boundaries he did not feel able to enforce.
“How much have you paid her?” Amy asked.
“I don’t know yet. Around thirty thousand, maybe more.”
Her eyes widened. “From where?”
“My travel premiums. Bonuses. Some from the credit line.”
“The house credit line?”
“Yes.”
Amy shifted Frederick higher on her lap.
“You borrowed against our house to pay her for money you said was a gift.”
“When you say it that way—”
“What way should I say it?”
Connor rubbed both hands over his face. “I thought if I kept helping, she’d stop treating it like a debt.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her to stop coming to the house?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her she couldn’t open our mail?”
“I changed the password.”
Amy stared at him.
He nodded. “I hear it.”
“No. You hear that I’m angry. I don’t think you hear what it means.”
Frederick dropped the book. Connor picked it up and wiped the wet corner with his sleeve.
May you like
Amy continued. “Every time she told me I was living in her house, I thought it was some cruel thing she invented. But you were paying her secretly. You were acting like she had a claim.”
“Not to the house.”
