Chapter 5: Eight Hundred Dollars
I sat in that parking lot for ten minutes looking at the transaction.
It was listed as a cash withdrawal from an ATM on Clement Street.
I knew that street.
It was six blocks from Ethan's office.
We had a rule — not a spoken one, more of an understanding built over years — that any expense over two hundred dollars got mentioned.
Not approved.
Just mentioned.
It was the kind of small courtesy that keeps a marriage feeling like a partnership rather than two people sharing a roof.
Eight hundred dollars.
No mention.
Three weeks ago.
I drove to my neighbor Carol's house and collected the boys.
She could tell something was wrong — Carol always could — but she just squeezed my arm and said, "They were perfect angels," and let me go without asking questions.
I loved her for that.
I got the twins settled, fed them, put them down.
Stood in the doorway of their room watching their chests rise and fall in the dim light.
Then I went to the kitchen table and called Ethan.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Nora.
Are you okay?
I've been—"
"There's an eight-hundred-dollar cash withdrawal from three weeks ago," I said.
"Clement Street ATM.
What was it for?"
Silence.
"Ethan."
"It was for Dana," he said.
I put my hand flat on the table.
"Explain that to me."
"The father — the man who got her pregnant — he'd been pressuring her.
Showing up at her building.
She needed to move to a safer place and she didn't have first month and deposit.
I covered it."
"You gave eight hundred dollars to another woman without telling me."
"I was going to pay it back before you noticed.
I had money coming in from the Henderson project and I thought—"
"That's not the point." My voice stayed level.
I was surprised by that.
"The point is that you made a financial decision that affected both of us, for someone I didn't know existed, and you hid it."
"I know."
"How much else is there that I don't know?"
"Nothing.
Nora, I promise you, that's everything."
"You said that about the test.
Then there was the apartment.
Then there was the coffee.
Then there was the eight hundred dollars." I paused.
"Every time I ask a question, there's one more thing."
"Because I kept thinking I'd find the right moment to tell you all of it at once.
I didn't want to drip it out and make it sound worse than it was."
"It sounds worse every time you drip it out, Ethan.
That's the problem."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Are you going to leave?"
I looked around our kitchen.
At the baby monitor on the counter.
At the two mugs drying on the rack, his and mine.
At the growth chart penciled on the door frame from when we'd jokingly measured ourselves the day we moved in.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," I said honestly.
"Right now I'm going to sleep.
You can take a cab home when they discharge you.
We'll talk in the morning."
"Nora—"
"Good night, Ethan."
I hung up.
I didn't sleep.
I lay in the dark on my side of the bed and stared at the ceiling and tried to sort what I actually knew from what I was afraid of.
What I knew: Ethan had formed a close friendship with a younger woman at work without telling me.
He had given her money.
He had planned to drive her to a medical appointment.
He had kept all of it hidden for four months.
What I didn't know: whether any of it was more than what they both claimed.
What I felt: something I couldn't name yet.
Not quite betrayal.
Not quite relief.
Something in between, with sharp edges.
At 2 AM I heard the front door open quietly.
His key in the lock, the careful way he closed it so it wouldn't wake the boys.
His footsteps down the hall, pausing outside the bedroom door.
He didn't open it.
After a moment I heard him move to the couch.
The soft sound of him settling in.
I stared at the ceiling until the room started to go grey with morning light.
And then I heard his phone buzz on the coffee table.
Once.
Twice.
Three times in quick succession.
May you like
Then his voice, low and urgent, like he didn't want me to hear.
"What do you mean he found out where you're living?"
