Chapter 4
Sloan offered to cancel the furniture orders.
I asked her to do it while I was present. She called the store, gave the order numbers, and waited on hold until a representative confirmed the orders had been stopped.
The bank sent written confirmation that no money had left my account for them.
I wanted to feel relieved. Instead, I wondered how many times I had accepted her first explanation because checking it felt unkind.
Grace called later that day.
“The bank also asked about an earlier transfer to an account in Harrison’s name,” she said. “It doesn’t appear on the card statements.”
“How much?”
“Six thousand dollars.”
I sat on the edge of my bed.
The money had moved from the emergency account three months earlier. Harrison had transferred it online. He had not mentioned it during our conversations about repayment.
When I confronted him, he looked startled that I knew.
“It was for a deposit,” he said.
“On what?”
“An apartment.”
“You’re still living here.”
“The application fell through. I used some of the money to cover bills while we looked again.”
“How much is left?”
“I can check.”
“Please do.”
Sloan stood behind him in the doorway.
“We were going to repay you,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I need to hear an amount, not a plan to tell me later.”
Harrison went upstairs to check the account. I waited at the table. Sloan stayed across from me, tapping one fingernail against her phone.
“I should have apologized for the cake,” she said suddenly.
I looked up.
“I hit the table harder than I meant to.”
“Did you mean to hit it at all?”
She stared at her phone.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’d told Brenda that Harrison and I had been staying longer than we planned. I heard you. It felt like you were talking about us behind our backs.”
“I told my friend I was tired. I hadn’t asked either of you to leave.”
“I know that now.”
I thought of the flowers Brenda had made from icing.
“You could have spoken to me.”
Sloan nodded. She did not say more.
Harrison returned with his phone. Only eleven hundred dollars remained from the transfer. He showed me the payments he had made with it. Rent application fees, a car repair, two credit card payments, and a large charge for Sloan’s handbag.
The bag had been bought partly with my money.
I looked at the charge, then at her.
“You demanded I pay to replace something you used my money to buy.”
Sloan’s face crumpled.
“Harrison told me it came from his savings.”
Harrison shut his eyes.
I could no longer tell which lies either of them had known. I knew I had paid for a handbag I had later burned, without anyone asking me.
Grace helped me separate the questions. I had destroyed an object and would take responsibility for the amount its owner had actually paid. Harrison owed me for money he had taken without permission. Neither canceled the other.
When I told Harrison I wanted the full six-thousand-dollar transfer included in our repayment agreement, he agreed.
Sloan did not speak to me for two days.
I went about my mornings. I made coffee. I watered Peter’s roses. I asked Brenda to come over one afternoon and stayed in the living room with her without checking whether it suited anyone else.
Harrison joined us before she left.
“I remember Dad pruning those,” he said, looking out at the roses.
“He used to leave the thorns in his gloves,” I said. “Then complain when he put them on again.”
Harrison smiled faintly. For a moment, he was the boy who had followed Peter through the garden with a small plastic watering can.
Then he looked at Brenda.
“I should have helped clean up the cake,” he said.
She met his eyes.
“Yes, you should have.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you loved your mother’s birthday when you were little,” Brenda said. “You know what that cake meant to her.”
Harrison looked down. He stayed to help me water the garden after Brenda went home.
We worked side by side for ten minutes. I wanted to ask him a hundred things. I settled on one.
“Why did you stop telling me when money was hard?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’d failed.”
“I would have helped you work out a budget.”
“I wanted to give Sloan the life I promised her.”
I turned off the hose.
“Did she ask you to spend my money?”
“Sometimes she asked me to fix things. I was the one who used the account.”
I appreciated the answer, though it hurt.
“You can make promises with money you have,” I said. “You can’t use mine and call it yours.”
He nodded.
A week later, Sloan and Harrison signed a lease. Their move-in date was two days before the deadline in Grace’s notice.
That night, I heard them arguing. Harrison said they could not afford the apartment they had chosen. Sloan said he had already promised the landlord.
I closed my bedroom door and tried not to listen.
In the morning, Harrison asked whether I could help with their deposit.
I gripped the doorframe.
May you like
“No,” I said.
He stood there a moment, then nodded and went to work.
