Chapter 7: The One More Thing
I had thought I was prepared for whatever came next.
I wasn't.
Melissa set her coffee mug on the counter and sat back down at the table.
She folded her hands in front of her the way she had the night before, and I recognized it now as something she did when she was about to say something she had rehearsed.
"The house," she said.
"What about it?" Ryan said.
"The down payment.
When we bought it, eight months ago.
You remember I said my grandmother had left me some money."
I remembered.
Sixty thousand dollars.
She had transferred it directly to the escrow account.
I had offered to split the down payment and she had said no, she wanted to contribute this, it mattered to her.
"That money wasn't from your grandmother," I said.
It wasn't a question.
I could already feel the shape of what was coming.
"No," she said.
"Where was it from?"
She looked at the table.
"Daniel lent it to me."
Ryan's pen stopped moving.
"He lent you sixty thousand dollars," I said.
"Yes."
"To put toward our house."
"Yes."
"Why."
She looked up.
"Because I asked him to.
Because I needed the down payment to go through and I didn't have the money and I didn't want to tell you that."
"And what did he expect in return?"
"Nothing.
He said it was a gift.
He said he owed me, from a long time ago."
"People don't lend sixty thousand dollars for nothing," Ryan said.
"Daniel did." She said it quietly but firmly.
"He's not — he's not a bad person.
He made mistakes too, when we were young.
He felt responsible."
"Responsible for what?" I said.
She was quiet for a moment.
"When we were together, I got pregnant.
I was twenty-three.
He didn't want to keep it.
He pushed me — not physically, but he pushed me until I agreed to end it." She paused.
"I've never fully forgiven him for that.
I don't think he's ever forgiven himself.
The money was his way of trying to make something right."
The kitchen was very still.
"That doesn't make it uncomplicated," Ryan said carefully.
"If Daniel Hartwell contributed sixty thousand dollars to the purchase of a property, and his marriage to you was never legally dissolved, and your subsequent marriage may therefore be invalid—" He stopped.
Looked at his notepad.
"He may have a claim."
Melissa nodded.
"I know."
"Have you spoken to him about this?"
"Last night.
After you went upstairs." She looked at me.
"He said he doesn't want the money back.
He said he wants no part of the property.
He'll sign whatever document says so."
"We'll need that in writing," Ryan said.
"Notarized."
"He'll do it.
I already asked him."
I stood up and walked to the window where she had been standing.
The garden looked ordinary in the grey morning light.
The flower beds Melissa had planted in the spring.
The small wooden bench she had picked out at a market and made me carry home on the roof of the car.
I had thought I was building something.
"Is there anything else?" I said, without turning around.
"No," she said.
"That's everything."
I stood at the window for a moment longer.
"Grace likes you," I said.
"I want you to know that.
Whatever happened between us — she genuinely liked you."
Melissa didn't say anything for a moment.
"I know," she said.
Her voice was different.
Quieter.
The composure had slipped, just slightly, at the edges.
"She's a remarkable kid.
She always was."
"She deserved better than this."
"So did you."
I turned around.
She was looking at me directly, and for the first time since the baby shower, I believed what I was seeing on her face.
Not calculation.
Not recovery.
Just a woman sitting at a kitchen table at eight in the morning, understanding exactly what she had done and finding no way around it.
"I'll be packed by noon," she said.
Ryan looked at me.
May you like
I nodded.
He opened his laptop again and began typing.
