Chapter 3: What Was Inside the Envelope
Eric picked it up slowly, like it might burn him.
He turned it over once, then slid out the single folded page inside.
I watched his eyes move across the top line.
His tan didn't hide the color draining from his face.
"Where did you get this?" he said.
"Does it matter?"
He looked up.
"This is from my bank."
"Your personal account," I said.
"The one I wasn't supposed to know about."
My sister shifted on the couch.
She didn't say anything.
Neither did my mother.
The babies were quiet for once, as if even they understood something important was happening.
"It's not what you think," Eric said.
"Then tell me what it is.
Because what I think is that you've been moving money out of our joint account for eleven months.
Small amounts.
Never the same number twice." I pointed at the page.
"That's not someone who forgot to mention a savings account.
That's someone who was planning."
He set the paper down.
"I was protecting myself."
"From what?"
"From exactly this." He spread his hands toward the room — the boxes, the suitcases, my mother, my sister, the papers on the table.
"From you deciding everything was over and leaving me with nothing."
"You left first, Eric.
You left while I was still bleeding."
He flinched.
It was small, but I saw it.
"I came back," he said.
"After two weeks in Cabo."
"I needed to clear my head."
My mother set the baby she was holding carefully into the portable crib by the armchair.
She straightened up and looked at Eric with the kind of patience that isn't kind at all.
"My daughter called me from the bathroom floor at three in the morning," she said.
"She couldn't stand up.
She had been awake for forty hours.
She didn't call you because you had turned your phone off.
She called me."
Eric opened his mouth.
"Don't," my mother said.
It was one word.
He closed his mouth.
I picked up the divorce papers and held them out to him.
"The financial disclosure is already attached.
My attorney has copies of the bank statements.
You can sign now or we can do this the longer way.
Either works for me."
He didn't take the papers.
He looked at me for a long moment, and I could see him calculating — not feeling, calculating.
That was the thing about Eric I had taken too long to understand.
When he went quiet, he wasn't processing emotion.
He was looking for an angle.
"You're not going to do this," he said finally.
"You have three newborns.
You can't manage alone."
"I already did.
For two weeks."
"That's not the same as—"
"Sign the papers, Eric."
He pulled out the chair across from me and sat down.
He laced his fingers together on the table like he was about to open a negotiation.
"I want to talk to my own attorney before I sign anything."
"That's your right," I said.
"But you're not staying in this house while we wait."
His jaw tightened again.
"You can't make me leave my own home."
My sister stood up from the couch.
She was still holding one of the babies against her shoulder.
"Her name is on the mortgage too," she said quietly.
"And there are three witnesses in this room who can describe exactly what happened when you walked through that door."
Eric looked at her.
Then at my mother.
Then back at me.
He pushed back the chair and stood.
"I'll get a hotel," he said.
"But this isn't over."
He picked up his suitcase from where he'd dropped it and walked toward the door.
He stopped with his hand on the frame and turned back once.
"I want to see my kids."
"Talk to your attorney," I said.
"He can contact mine."
The door closed behind him.
My mother crossed the room and put her arms around me without saying anything.
My sister sat back down on the couch.
One of the babies made a small sound, and she rocked him gently.
I didn't cry.
I had already done that — in the bathroom at three in the morning, on the floor, while Eric's phone rang out to voicemail somewhere in Cabo.
I was done crying.
May you like
Now I just needed to finish it.
But what I didn't know yet — what none of us knew — was that Eric's hotel that night wasn't a hotel at all.
