“I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“You did.”
“She wouldn’t listen.”
The words were so familiar.
So casual.
How many times had he said similar things over fifteen years?
You’re not listening.
Your mother doesn’t listen.
Why can’t anyone listen?
As though disagreement were a character defect.
“What was the money for?” I asked.
Silence.
“Kelsey.”
“Were you leaving me?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I was fixing our future.”
“With stolen money?”
“That money was sitting there. Your father never even told you it existed.”
“So that made it yours?”
“You don’t understand what eighteen million dollars can do.”
“No. I understand exactly what it did.”
He began crying.
Or performing crying.
By then I no longer knew the difference.
“I love you.”
I closed my eyes.
For one devastating heartbeat, I saw us at thirty.
Young.
Poor.
Eating pizza on moving boxes because we had no dining table.
