Chapter 4: The Man Behind the Charges
Dean picked up her phone.
She reached for it.
"Dean—"
He turned away from her and read the message.
His face didn't change expression, which was worse than if it had.
He set the phone down in front of me.
The message was short.
*Did she find out?
Call me.*
I read it twice.
"Who is Marcus to you?" Dean asked.
"I told you.
A contractor."
"Contractors don't ask if someone found out," he said.
"They send invoices."
Priscilla pushed back from the table and stood.
"This isn't what it looks like."
"Then tell me what it looks like," I said.
She walked to the kitchen window and stood with her back to us.
Outside, the neighbor's dog was barking at something in the dark.
The Christmas lights kept blinking.
"Marcus helped me," she said.
"I was in a difficult situation and he helped me."
"What situation?" Dean asked.
She turned around.
Her eyes were bright, not with tears but with something that looked more like calculation.
"I owe him money," she said.
"I borrowed from him last year and I needed to pay him back.
I didn't have it.
So I used the card."
"You used my card," I said, "to pay back a debt to a man my son has never heard of."
"It was temporary."
"Fourteen months is not temporary," I said.
Dean stood up.
He walked to her slowly, the way you approach something you are no longer certain of.
"How much do you owe Marcus?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"How much?"
"It's handled now," she said.
"That's why I needed the money.
To handle it."
"It is not handled," I said.
"Fourteen thousand dollars of my money is missing and I am sitting at my own kitchen table asking my daughter-in-law who she borrowed money from and why."
Dean put his hand on the counter beside her.
Not touching her.
Just there.
"What does Marcus have on you?" he asked quietly.
The room went completely still.
Priscilla looked at him for a long moment.
Something shifted behind her eyes.
She was deciding something.
"Nothing," she said.
"He has nothing on me."
But she said it one beat too slowly.
Dean stepped back.
He looked at me, and for the first time since he had walked through that back door, he looked like my son again and not a man trying to manage a situation he didn't understand.
"Mom," he said, "I'm sorry."
"I know," I said.
"I didn't know about any of this."
"I know that too."
He pulled out his own phone.
"I'm calling our attorney."
Priscilla moved fast.
"You don't need to do that.
We can sort this out ourselves.
Family doesn't need lawyers."
"You used my mother's credit card for fourteen months to pay a man she's never met," Dean said.
"Which part of that do you think we sort out ourselves?"
"Dean." Her voice shifted.
Softer now.
The voice she used when she wanted something.
"Please.
Just give me until after Christmas.
I'll explain everything.
I'll get the money together.
We don't have to make this bigger than it is."
Dean looked at her for a long moment.
Then he looked at my suitcase, still sitting beside the hallway closet.
Ready.
Packed before any of this had started.
"Mom," he said, "where were you planning to go?"
"My friend Carol's," I said.
"In Vermont.
She's been asking me to visit for two years."
He nodded slowly.
"Then go," he said.
"I'll call you tomorrow."
Priscilla took one step toward him.
"Dean—"
"Don't," he said.
Just that one word.
And she stopped.
I picked up my suitcase.
Priscilla watched me from the kitchen, standing very still, the Christmas lights blinking red and white across her face.
She didn't say goodbye.
She didn't apologize.
She watched me the way a person watches a door closing on something they can no longer stop.
I walked out into the cold.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket before I reached the car.
A text from Dean: *I found something.
I'll call you tonight.
Drive safe.*
I sat in the driver's seat for a moment, engine running, heat beginning to push through the vents.
Through the kitchen window I could see Priscilla.
She had her own phone to her ear.
She wasn't looking at the window.
She was pacing.
Fast.
May you like
I put the car in reverse.
Whatever she was telling Marcus, I would know soon enough.
