Chương 4
Daniel pushed his stool backward and stood.
“I need water.”
“There’s a sink.”
He filled a glass and drank half of it facing away from me.
I watched his shoulders.
They had once been one of the safest things in my life.
Now I was studying them for evidence.
“Aaron started borrowing after his company lost a major client,” he said.
“Borrowing from whom?”
“Credit cards first.”
“Then?”
“Mom.”
“With money she didn’t have.”
“He told her he could recover.”
“Did he?”
Daniel gave a small shake of his head.
“He kept saying the next contract would fix it.”
“And Lauren?”
“She knew some of it.”
“Some?”
“She knew he was in trouble.”
“That number says ninety-six thousand.”
Daniel turned around.
“That isn’t money Lauren took.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s debt in her name.”
The coffee machine beeped.
Neither of us acknowledged it.
“Aaron used her credit.”
“With her permission?”
“At first.”
Those two words landed heavily.
“What does at first mean?”
“It means they were moving balances around.”
“Moving balances around is something people say when they don’t want to say borrowing.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His mouth tightened.
“I’m trying to tell you.”
“No, you’re trying to tell me the version that hurts you least.”
“That’s not fair.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep acting like I stole from you.”
I opened the folder to the March transaction.
“What was this?”
He looked at the date.
His face drained.
“The water heater.”
“There was no water heater.”
“There was.”
“Daniel.”
“It broke in January.”
I felt something inside me go still.
“You called me in March.”
“Yes.”
“You told me it had happened that morning.”
“I needed the money.”
“For what?”
He stared at the countertop.
“For Aaron.”
I turned away from him.
There were moments when anger felt hot.
This wasn’t one of them.
This felt like standing outside in winter without a coat and discovering that cold could become painful before it became numb.
“How many times?”
“Mari.”
“How many emergencies did you invent?”
He said nothing.
I looked back.
“How many?”
“Four.”
I laughed.
It came out wrong.
“My God.”
“The dental surgery was real.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“The car?”
He hesitated.
“Real.”
“The roof leak?”
“Real, but cheaper than I told you.”
“Your mother’s insurance deductible?”
He looked down.
“Not real.”
I walked to the coffee machine because I needed something to do with my hands.
I poured both cups.
Mine overflowed because I wasn’t watching.
Coffee ran over my fingers.
“Damn it.”
Daniel moved toward me.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
I grabbed a dish towel.
For the next few seconds, we watched brown liquid spread through white cotton.
It was ridiculous how normal the kitchen smelled.
Coffee.
Dish soap.
The lemon cleaner I used on Sundays.
“How much of my money went to Aaron?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Maybe twenty-five thousand directly.”
“Directly.”
“There were other expenses.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
I put the towel in the sink.
“And your credit card?”
Daniel sat again.
That frightened me more than anything he had said.
“What about it?”
“Robert found payments I don’t recognize.”
He pressed both palms against the counter.
“I used cash advances.”
“For Aaron?”
“At first.”
There were those words again.
I sat opposite him.
“Then for what?”
“To cover payments.”
“What payments?”
“The payments from the previous borrowing.”
I stared at him.
Daniel’s eyes were red now, but he wasn’t crying.
He looked ashamed.
I had spent years imagining that if he ever truly betrayed me, I would see calculation in his face.
Instead, he looked like a man who had kept digging because admitting he was in a hole felt worse than the next shovelful.
“How bad is it?”
“I owe about sixty-eight thousand.”
My fingers tightened around the coffee mug.
“You told me the balance was twelve.”
“That’s the card you can see.”
I set the mug down very carefully.
“How many cards?”
“Five.”
The refrigerator hummed behind us.
A car horn sounded somewhere on the street below.
“Are any in my name?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever sign my name?”
“No.”
“Use my Social Security number?”
His head snapped up.
“Jesus, Mariana, no.”
“You lied about emergencies to get money from me.”
“I know.”
“So don’t be offended by the question.”
He looked away.
“You’re right.”
I opened his accordion folder.
Inside were statements, overdue notices, handwritten calculations, and printouts from lending websites.
This wasn’t a recent panic.
Some pages were two years old.
“You kept records.”
“I was trying to fix it.”
“You kept records of lying to me.”
“I kept records because I thought if I could organize everything, I could find a way out.”
I found a spreadsheet with names down the left side.
Theresa.
Daniel.
Aaron.
Lauren.
Beside each name were debts.
Some numbers had been crossed out and replaced.
Others were circled.
At the bottom was a total.
$417,860.
I stopped breathing for a second.
“This is the family debt?”
“An estimate.”
“Does that include Theresa’s original mortgage?”
“No.”
I looked up.
Daniel’s face had gone gray.
“Then what exactly have I been supporting for three years?”
He opened his mouth.
My phone rang.
Theresa.
I declined it.
It rang again immediately.
Daniel looked at the screen.
“Answer.”
“Why?”
“Because if she’s calling twice, something happened.”
I answered on speaker.
Theresa wasn’t screaming this time.
She was crying.
“Mariana, please.”
“What happened?”
“There are men at the house.”
Daniel stood so quickly his stool scraped across the floor.
“What men?”
Theresa heard him.
“Daniel?”
“Mom, who’s there?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do they want?”
“They said they’re from some company.”
Her breathing hitched.
“They have papers.”
“What company?”
She said the name.
Daniel went completely still.
I had never heard it before.
But he had.
“What is it?” I asked.
Daniel didn’t answer.
Theresa did.
“They said Aaron used the house as collateral.”
I looked at Daniel.
May you like
His lips parted.
“No,” he whispered.
