Brian smiled, nodded. “You ready now? My laptop has all the software we need for recording.”
“It’s a whole new world, isn’t it?” Layla said. “I’m all warmed up. This seems like as good a time as any.”
chapter 35
Layla
Layla called Josh one night after dinner. “Are you busy on Saturday afternoon?”
“Nope,” he said. “Sasha will be with her mom. What’s up?”
“I found a guitar on Craigslist and I’d like to look at it, but I also don’t want to get murdered or thrown in the trunk of a car or planted in somebody’s backyard. The price sounds a little too good to be true. Call me skeptical.”
“That was a very colorful description of what can happen when you buy something on Craigslist. But your caution is understandable,” he said. “Sure, I can go with you.”
“Thanks. How does noon sound?”
“Noon works. I’ll see you then.”
If things worked out with the guitar, she would now own three. She needed to stop buying them, but guitars were to Layla what shoes were to most women. She could never have too many and they’d last a lot longer than shoes and would never go out of style.
The purchases were made even sweeter by the fact that she absolutely, positively had enough money to buy them.
* * *
Layla stopped at the mall on her way home from school. She and Liam were joining her family on Sunday for her mother’s birthday, and Layla wanted to pick up her gift. It had been a while since she’d gone shopping, because she was teaching so many lessons in the evening that she barely had time to feed herself between the time she left school and when the lessons started. Last year, when Liam had received a bonus even bigger than the last one, they’d had one of their worst fights after he announced that they should go somewhere warm for a week to escape the god-awful cold snap that had blanketed most of Minnesota.
“I can’t just take off for a week,” Layla said. “I don’t get very many personal days at school and I have lessons to give every night.”
“Why don’t you just quit?”
“My job?” she asked. “Why would I do that?” Did he really think her financial contribution to the marriage was so insignificant that she should just throw it away so they could spend a week on the beach?
“You can take a week off from school. What are they going to do? Fire you?”
“Well, I did sign a contract.”
“At least give up those lessons,” he said. Liam hated that she still gave the lessons. He couldn’t understand why she did it, because they “didn’t need the money.” But to Layla, the lessons—and her job—represented much more than the income Liam thought was too meager to mean anything. He’d conveniently forgotten the buffer Layla’s income had provided when he was between jobs or had overspent, which was something that seemed to be happening more often. Then, once he’d landed on his feet, he’d ramp up his spending once again like the lean time had never happened.
“I’m not giving up the lessons,” Layla said.
Layla browsed the racks of sweaters until she found a soft burgundy one in her mother’s size. She selected a scarf to go with it and asked for a gift box and gift receipt. On her way out she checked out her favorite department store and, on a whim, she bought some new clothes for work. She had been slowly building her business-casual wardrobe since she started teaching, and she needed to add a few pieces to it. The saleslady rang up her purchases and then leaned toward Layla slightly and said, “That card doesn’t seem to have gone through. Do you have another?”
Layla’s forehead crinkled. The card had worked for the sweater. “Can you try it again? I don’t know why it didn’t work.” The saleslady tried it again, and it was declined again. Layla had first given her a debit card, but this time she pulled out her credit card, and it was declined, too. Her face grew warm, because there were a few people behind her in line. She dug in her wallet and came up with the credit card she used to use before Liam gave her the platinum card. She had no idea if it would still work, but the saleslady looked at her and gave her a commiserating smile and said, “There we go. Okay, I’ll just wrap these up and you’ll be on your way.” Layla didn’t realize that she’d been holding her breath until she tried to speak and didn’t have enough air in her lungs to form words. She opted to nod instead, and as soon as the items were ready, she scurried from the store, full of questions. Full of worry.
Liam’s face fell when she walked through the door holding the shopping bags. “Did you go shopping?” he asked.
“Why didn’t either of my cards work?”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “My bonus is late. They were supposed to deposit them last Friday and we’re all still waiting. Some sort of payroll glitch, they said. I’m going to pay everything off and then we’ll be caught up from when I was out of work. I was going to surprise you and then we had this glitch. The deposit is supposed to be hitting our accounts by the end of the day tomorrow.”
Jesus. How much did we owe this time? she thought.
And why wasn’t she paying closer attention? She had grown complacent again because everything had seemed to run smoothly over the years, even with his gaps in employment, and she’d had no reason to doubt that Liam was managing their finances the way he was supposed to. How many times had they teetered on the edge of a debit or credit card being declined? If she hadn’t gone to the mall on her way home, she wouldn’t even have known there was cause for concern.
She wanted to believe every word that had just come out of his mouth. She decided that she wouldn’t think about it until the next day to see if the money did make it into their accounts. And the next day the money was there just like he said it would be. “I wasn’t lying about it,” he said when she told him she’d checked.
“I know,” she said. But the truth didn’t change the fact that she and Liam were not at all compatible when it came to money and that incompatibility had slowly seeped its way into every crevice, every aspect of their marriage until the good parts of Liam that Layla had always loved were now being eclipsed by the fear and stress and anxiety she felt when Liam dragged her through the same issue over and over again.
That was around the time she started checking their bank balance every day. She knew the password to their online account because she’d been the one to set it up back when she never thought she’d have to worry about this kind of thing. Pay attention? Yes. But worry? No. It wasn’t as easy to be judgmental or to monitor someone who outearned her by such a large margin.