Chapter 12 - WHAT MONEY COULD NOT BUY
After the meeting, Dad found me on the back steps.
Wren slept inside with Mrs. Alvarez nearby.
I had been looking at the same fallen leaf for ten minutes.
“He admitted it,” I said.
Dad sat beside me.
“Taking the car?”
I nodded.
His hands curled into fists, then slowly opened.
“I can cover Faye’s loan.”
I turned toward him.
“Why?”
“To keep them from losing their house over this.”
“And Roland?”
“He still answers for what he did.”
“Would he?”
Dad looked away.
All my life, I had known he had money.
He had built a regional supply business over thirty years. He still complained about restaurant parking fees and wore shirts until the collars frayed.
Roland knew Dad owned a business.
He had never cared enough to ask much more until he needed an investor.
Now money was sitting between us, offering to make everything quiet again.
“Don’t buy quiet,” I said.
Dad looked at me.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I think you hate seeing me hurt.”
“I do.”
“And I think you’d pay almost anything to stop it.”
“Yes.”
I leaned against his shoulder.
“Then pay Mrs. Alvarez fairly for the extra help. Drive me when I’m too tired. Hold Wren so I can shower. Help me think.”
He nodded.
“But don’t make his choices disappear.”
“All right.”
That night, Faye called.
She and Ben had spoken with their own attorney and their lender. They were making a plan.
Not a painless one.
A real one.
“We canceled the kitchen renovation,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m angry about the kitchen. I’m angrier that I helped them make you feel small.”
We sat quietly on the phone.
Then she asked, “Are you leaving him?”
I looked at Wren’s little clothes drying on a rack.
“I don’t know how to stay married to someone I have to investigate.”
Two days later, Roland asked to meet for coffee after a scheduled visit with Wren.
He wore the gray sweater I’d bought him for Christmas.
For a moment, I saw the old apartment again.
The leaking ceiling.
The man who had once waited outside my office with a sandwich because I’d forgotten lunch.
“I’ll do counseling,” he said. “I’ll sell the company. I’ll make it right.”
“I’m glad you’re willing to change.”
Hope flashed across his face.
May you like
Then I placed my wedding ring on the table.
“But I’m not going to be your reward for doing it.”
