I move behind him and give him a tight hug.
“I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving you, Dawson.” I start crying. The thought of not being with him tears me to pieces. Back to the pieces of what was left after Bam. Dawson has made my heart whole again, and he doesn’t even understand how valuable that makes him.
He keeps his head down and repeats, “I have nothing to give.”
“Dawson, that’s what you don’t understand. You’ve already given me the one thing I’ve never truly had. The one thing I need. And that’s love. In case you’ve never heard the saying Money can’t buy love, it’s true. I’m proof. I’ll give it all away if you want. If it will put us on a level playing field. I just want love. I just want to be loved.”
He raises his head slightly.
“I do love you.”
“I know you do. I swear to you. It’s all I’ll ever need. Please.”
He touches my face and pulls me onto his lap, kissing me and sliding his hands up my blouse.
“No,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because you still haven’t told me everything.”
He hangs his head. “You’re right. I haven’t.”
“The girls told me the other night that their mama spent all your money. How did she wipe you out? What did she do with the money?” I run my hand gently across my forearm.
“I really don’t want to talk about it, Vanessa.”
“You have to. I can see it in your eyes, Dawson. You need to. And I need to understand. Please tell me.”
He takes a deep breath. “She always had issues with her family. Her sister, Winnie, was her mother’s favorite and could do no wrong. Even though I told her over and over that what her family thought didn’t matter, she was always trying to impress them. To get back in her mother’s good graces. I traveled a lot for my job. We had a nanny that helped her take care of the kids, but because I worked a lot, a lot of the household duties were left to her, like paying the bills. Anyway, she invested all our money into some fund her mom told her about. It was Winnie’s husband’s deal, and she was trying to help.
“She never felt good enough for her family and this was one thing she could do. I get her motivation, but she never asked me. Obviously, you never want to invest all your money in the same place. Even her mother didn’t invest that much.
“Turns out brother-in-law had gotten mixed up with some shady people. She lost everything, but never told me. Not even when it was on the news. Not when he was arrested. When he was set to go to trial about six months later, I came home and found her in tears. She suffered from depression and tears were common, but she sat me down and confessed that she had gotten notice that our house was being foreclosed on because she hadn’t paid the mortgage in months. Then she told me the truth about investing all our money and that we had lost everything.
“I was upset. Stormed out of the house to think. Digest it. Figure out what the hell we were going to do. Once I calmed down, I realized she was scammed by her family. It didn’t excuse what she did, but I understood why she did it. I went back and told her it would be okay. That somehow I’d make it okay.”
“Did you know how to make it okay?”
“Not really, but I knew my family would help. A week later, I was working on getting the foreclosure stopped when she called me at the office and told me she had sent the girls to my parents’ house for the evening. That we needed a night alone.”
He stops speaking, a pained faraway look filling his eyes. He closes them tightly and shakes his head, willing some memory away.
“When I got home, I found her. In the garage. Dead. When she killed herself, part of me went with her. I was a wreck, her parents had the nerve to blame me, and the girls cried and cried because they didn’t understand where Mommy went. My parents suggested we let the house go into foreclosure and move in with them. I was too devastated to argue, but it turned out to be a good thing. I don’t know what I would have done without them. I’ve spent the last two years being a dad. When Keatyn offered me the job again, they told me it was time.”
“I don’t understand how she could leave you and those beautiful girls.”
“I can understand why she left me. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough husband. Maybe we never should have gotten married. I don’t know. But I cannot for the life of me understand how she could do that to our children. So now you know why I have nothing to offer you.”
“Dawson, if you truly believe that money is what’s important to me, we probably should call it quits. But I think you know love is all you need in life.”
“I already learned that love is all you need, Vanessa. That’s why I quit work and spent two years with my daughters. They were more important than my pride, than money, than anything. I just didn’t know if you knew. Especially when I saw all your jewels.”
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like you weren’t enough.”