Chapter 7: The Conversation on the Lanai
Kevin called again at seven the next morning, Maui time.
This time I answered.
"Mom." He exhaled like he'd been holding his breath since yesterday.
"Thank God."
"I'm here," I said.
"Are you in Maui?"
"Yes."
A pause.
"You actually went."
"I paid for it," I said.
"Kevin, I want to have the conversation I asked for at the airport.
The real one."
"I know.
I owe you that.
I owe you more than that." His voice was low.
Jessica was presumably nearby.
"Can I call you tonight?
After the kids are in bed?"
"You can call me now."
"Mom—"
"Kevin.
I found something in the joint account."
Silence.
"Thirty-four thousand dollars," I said.
"Transferred in small amounts over eighteen months into an account I don't recognize.
I've asked Carol to identify it."
More silence.
Longer this time.
"Kevin, if you know what that account is, I need you to tell me right now.
Before Carol finds it.
Before this becomes something neither of us can walk back from."
I heard him breathe.
"I didn't know about it," he said.
"I swear to you, Mom.
I didn't know."
"Whose name is on it?"
"I don't—" He stopped.
"I think I know.
But I need to check."
"Check now."
"Mom, I can't just—"
"Kevin." My voice was very quiet.
"I have been paying your mortgage for three years.
I paid for this vacation.
I have been your mother for forty-one years.
I am asking you to check one thing right now while I wait."
I heard him move.
A door opening, closing.
The sound of a balcony, wind, ocean.
"It's Jessica," he said.
His voice had changed completely.
"It's her personal account.
The one she opened last year.
She said it was for — she said it was a household savings account."
"It is not a household account," I said.
"It has been receiving transfers from our joint account for eighteen months."
The silence this time had a different quality.
"Kevin.
Did you know about the airport plan two weeks in advance?"
"What?"
"Jessica told Linda two weeks ago that I had offered my seat.
That I wasn't coming.
Did you know she had told her that?"
"No." The word came out hard and fast.
"No.
She told me at the airport.
In the car park.
She said Linda had called at the last minute and really wanted to come and that you had — she said you had already said it was fine."
"I said nothing of the sort."
"I know that now." His voice cracked slightly at the edge.
"Mom, I know that now."
"But you said nothing at the gate."
"I didn't know what to say.
I didn't know what was true.
I should have — I should have stopped it.
I know that.
I have known it since the moment you walked away."
I watched a wave break against the rocks below the lanai.
"Kevin.
I need you to listen to me very carefully."
"I'm listening."
"I love you.
That has not changed and it will not change.
But I need you to understand something.
What happened at that airport was not a misunderstanding.
It was not a last-minute decision.
Jessica planned it two weeks in advance, recruited her mother with a false story, and used your silence as a weapon against me.
And there is thirty-four thousand dollars missing from an account with your name on it."
He didn't speak.
"I am not your enemy," I said.
"But I need you to decide whose side you are on.
Not for my sake.
For yours.
And for Tyler and Emma's."
A long pause.
"What do I do?" he asked.
And for a moment he sounded exactly like the boy who used to come into my room at two in the morning and ask me the same question after a nightmare.
"Start by telling me the truth," I said.
"All of it.
Everything you know."
He told me.
May you like
It took forty minutes.
By the end of it, I understood that the $34,000 was not the worst of what Jessica had been doing.
