“No, ma’am. That’s the thing. I told him you seemed fine, and he got mad. He said I needed to look harder. He said if I saw you buy wine, I should text him a picture.”
Something behind my ribs went very quiet.
“You said you couldn’t do it anymore. Why now?”
He looked away.
“He got mad.”
“My dad used to talk about my mom the way your husband talks about you. Like he was the only one keeping her together. She wasn’t broken. He just needed her to be.”
I let that sit between us.
“How do you contact him?”
Marcus reached into his backpack and pulled out a folded slip of paper.
His hand was shaking a little.
“He just needed her to be.”
“That’s his Venmo. That’s the number he uses, but I think it’s a burner.”
I took the paper.
I slipped it into my back pocket like it might burn through the fabric.
“Marcus, where are you staying tonight?”
“The shelter on Ninth. I’m okay.”
“Do you have a phone?”
I took the paper.
He pulled out something ancient held together with tape.
“I’ll get you a real one,” I said. “I’m going to need to find you again. Is that alright?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I opened my wallet and gave him what cash I had.
Not out of pity.
Out of something closer to gratitude, which I didn’t have words for yet.
“Don’t tell him you spoke to me,” I said. “Text him whatever you’d normally text him.”
“I’m going to need to find you again.”
***
I drove home the long way, my mind sorting through the locked office.
The lawyer’s card.
The way David had asked, twice this week, whether I’d stopped anywhere on the way home.
By the time I pulled into our driveway, I knew I wasn’t going to say a single word about any of it.
Not until I knew why he was doing this.
I drove home the long way.
***
David and I ate dinner, and spoke like we did every night.
Except this time, I was cataloguing every word he said.
Halfway through dinner, David asked, “Have you given any more thought to that offer on the cabin?”
“Of course, not”
“It won’t stay open forever.”
“I’m not selling the cabin.”
“You’re quiet tonight,”
***
The next morning, after David left for the hospital, I pulled up our joint bank statements.
There they were.
Cash withdrawals every Friday for months.
Three hundred, sometimes four.
