Chapter 6: The Morning After the Night Before
Michael called at seven forty-two the next morning.
I was already awake.
I had been awake since five, sitting at my kitchen table with coffee I kept reheating and Thomas's pendant laid flat on the wood in front of me.
"Can I come over?" he asked.
"The door's unlocked."
He arrived twenty minutes later.
He had changed out of the wedding suit into jeans and a grey sweater.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
He probably hadn't.
I poured him coffee without asking.
He sat down at the same table where he had sat at twenty-two, and he wrapped both hands around the mug, and he looked at the pendant between us.
"I used to wear that," he said.
"When I was a teenager.
Did you know that?"
"Your father told me."
"I'd forgotten." He touched the edge of it with one finger.
"I remembered last night.
Standing out there on the terrace.
I remembered wearing it to his funeral and then putting it in a drawer because I couldn't look at it." He was quiet.
"You kept it."
"Of course I kept it."
He looked up.
"Mom.
I'm sorry."
I waited.
"For last night.
For the chair.
For standing there and not—" He stopped.
"I saw her take it off my neck.
I watched her drop it in your hand.
And I didn't say anything." His jaw worked.
"I don't have an explanation for that.
I've been trying to find one since midnight and I don't have one."
"You were trying to keep the peace," I said.
"That's not good enough."
"No," I agreed.
"It isn't."
He nodded.
He had expected that.
He deserved it.
"What are you going to do?" I asked.
"I don't know yet." He drank his coffee.
"She called this morning.
Early.
She wants to meet with a financial advisor together.
She wants to put everything on the table — the full debt, the property situation, all of it — and figure out if there's a path through it."
"That's different from three weeks after the honeymoon and a pen."
"Yes," he said.
"It is."
"Do you believe she means it?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"I believe she's scared enough to mean it right now.
Whether that holds—" He shook his head.
"I don't know her well enough to know.
And that's its own problem, isn't it.
I married someone I don't know well enough."
I didn't answer that.
He wasn't wrong.
"The invoice," he said.
"The $186,000.
Are you actually going to collect it?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On whether she was honest with you last night.
Fully honest.
Not just the parts she calculated were safe to tell."
He frowned slightly.
"What do you mean?"
I set down my mug.
"Michael.
Your mother-in-law came to me last night with a document.
A loan agreement.
$340,000.
Invalid collateral.
A timeline designed around your signature." I looked at him.
"Vanessa told you about the debt.
Did she tell you the full amount?"
He was still.
"What amount did she give you?"
He said nothing for a moment.
Then: "She said it was around $200,000."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"The document Diane showed me," I said carefully, "listed $340,000."
Michael put his mug down.
"She told you $200,000," I said.
"Last night.
After she said she was going to tell you everything."
He stood up from the table.
Walked to the window.
Stood there with his back to me, looking out at the garden.
"She's still managing it," he said.
"Even when she's confessing, she's managing it."
I didn't say anything.
He had reached it himself.
That mattered.
He turned around.
May you like
His face had settled into something I recognized — something Thomas used to do when he had made a decision and was simply waiting for the right moment to say it out loud.
"I need to see the document," he said.
