My mother folded her napkin once, then again, and laid it beside her plate. “I would have given you the money, Lauren. You only ever had to ask.”
Kyle set the photograph down very carefully as it might break.
When he turned around, his eyes were red.
“Your mother may be why it started,” I said. “But she isn’t why you lied to mine.”
Kyle returned to the table, wrote a check, and set it in front of Mom. “Mom gets every dollar back tonight.”
Lauren had nothing to say.
Lauren looked at him. “Kyle…”
“And tomorrow, I want a list of every person you owe. Every loan, every credit card, every story you’ve told to get money. Everything.”
Her face went pale. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m not going home with you tonight.”
“Kyle.”
He picked up his keys from the table. “And you don’t ask my mother for another dollar. Ever.”
I’d asked the questions.
For the first time since I’d known her, Lauren had nothing to say.
Kyle slept on our mother’s couch that night.
By morning, Lauren had sent him a list of debts he’d never known existed.
He didn’t tell me what that meant for their marriage.
He didn’t have to.
I hadn’t let anyone convince me.
The next morning, I drove Mom to the appliance store. She picked a white model with a bottom freezer and paid from the envelope Kyle’s check had refilled.
Six months earlier, I’d stood in Ethan’s apartment with my hand inches from a photograph and convinced myself not to look because I was terrified of being wrong again.
This time, when something hadn’t made sense, I’d looked closer. I’d asked the questions.
And I hadn’t let anyone convince me I was imagining what was right in front of me.
