He laughed a little, this kind of derisive snort he issued that drove her crazy. “That’s a drop in the bucket.”
“It’s a small buffer at least,” she said. “We need to get a debt counselor. I’ll go back to work. We can consolidate that debt, and set a budget, work on paying some of this off.”
He shook his head, an odd black look on his face. It was the strangest thing, as she sat there with him, the sensation that her husband, a man she’d known since childhood, was someone else. Who was he? A stranger, someone less somehow than the man she thought she knew. The kind of love they shared was supposed to be unconditional. Wasn’t it? She didn’t even want to look at him.
“What else?” she said. It was there, standing in the corner, a black shadow, a wraith. A nebulous, shifting menace.
“This isn’t bad enough?” he asked.
“The withdrawals, the cash advances, so much debt. We’re not exactly living high on the hog here, Chad.”
He shook his head. “You think it’s cheap? That school? The rent here. Insurance. Food. Clothes. Vacations. Hell, we spent a hundred dollars on dinner and the movies for the three of us last weekend.
“It doesn’t add up,” she said. “I know what we spend.”
Did he forget that she was smart, educated, good with numbers? She didn’t blame him for forgetting if he had. She had forgotten all of that herself. She had let him take the reins of her life and let her world grow small—the house, the school, Zoey, Chad. Her friends had all left Lost Valley. One lived in the city, a magazine executive. Her other close girlfriend was a travel writer, always sending gifts from exotic climes. She never envied them, both of them childless, one unhappily married, the other always with someone new. At least Heather was happy. Well. Happy-ish. As happy as she could be. Or was that just what she told herself?
“What else, Chad?” she asked again. “Where did all that money go?”
She’d gone through his paystubs, too. There were one or two that showed overtime. But mostly not. She wracked her brain for dates he said he was working, events at school he missed. She checked the corresponding stubs. There were discrepancies. She’d never once doubted, not for a second, that he wasn’t where he said he was, doing what he said he was doing. She’d never doubted his love. Other men lied and cheated; friends’ marriages collapsed around them. Not Chad. Not their marriage. And here they were. What a sad cliché. Not that she was faultless. Not at all.
“Heather,” he said.
“Just tell me,” she said. “We’ll fix it together.”
He reached for her hand. And his touch repelled her. She let her hand rest beneath his for a moment, then drew it away. That dark stranger, the one that resided in his eyes, knew the truth. On some level, he’d lost her. Long before this, they’d been in a slow drift, too busy, too caught up in the day-to-day to even notice.
“I have a way out of this,” he said. “Give me a chance to make it right.”
One of the things she had always liked about numbers was how predictable they were. Money, too. Money came in. If you didn’t spend it, you saved and it grew. If you spent more than you made, you accumulated debt. So, there was the enormous sum that they owed and the paltry (by comparison) amount of his paycheck. Heather would have to go back to work. They’d have to get someone to help them reorganize their debt and get on a tight budget. Chad would need to work overtime when he could. There was no other way to navigate this crisis.
“There’s no magic bullet for this, Chad,” she said.
Was it gambling? She couldn’t think of anything else. He barely drank. She’d never known him to take drugs. She really didn’t think he was having an affair.
“What if there is a magic bullet,” the stranger asked her. The desperate, dark-eyed stranger.
Zoey burst through the front door then. Heather had asked Crystal to take her day on carpool. Zoey planted kisses on each of their cheeks, then breezed through the kitchen, grabbing an apple from the refrigerator.
“Ugh,” she said. “I have so much homework. Heading right up.”
She thundered up the stairs, oblivious to what was unfolding between her parents.
“What are you doing home, Dad?” she yelled from upstairs. But she wasn’t interested enough to wait for an answer. Heather heard her door slam. Homework. Sure. She was going to get right online and play one of those stupid games with her friends.
Chad got to his feet.
“I have to get back,” he said, as if he’d just happened home for lunch.
“No,” she said, leaning forward. “I need to know everything. What are you talking about? What magic bullet?”
He lifted his palms in surrender. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re right. I’ve fucked up and we have to fix it. I assume this means you aren’t going to Key West.”
He was distant, blank almost. She wanted to reach out and grab the stranger and shake him until her real husband came back. The one, whatever his faults, had always taken care of her and Zoey.
“Well?”
Key West. Mary Jane’s wedding. Heather’s heart sank. She’d been looking forward to this little getaway so much, even more so when Chad stubbornly refused to come. She wanted the time to herself, without the shadow of his needs and under-the-breath comments, and all of it.
“I’m still going,” she said. She held on to it, like a jewel clutched in her fist. The smell of the ocean, the swaying palms. Mary Jane said there would be a string quartet. Heather had begged him to come; part of her had wanted that at first. But he’d said no. Now she knew why.
“Fine,” he said. He wasn’t even looking at her. She wasn’t even there. “What difference does it make at this point, anyway?”
When had she stopped loving him? When had she stopped craving his closeness, admiring things about him? Or maybe she was just angry, deeply angry. She tried to think about how she had felt on their wedding day. Relieved. She’d felt relieved like she had on graduation day, as if she’d accomplished something that her parents had both very much wanted her to do. Her dad had loved Chad, the son he never had. Heather was a good girl. She always did what was expected.
He started to leave and then stopped in the doorway without looking back.
“I’m going to fix this,” he said. “You’ll see.”
“Chad.”
But then he was gone. She got up and watched him from the kitchen window. He sat in the truck for a minute, gripping the wheel with both hands, head bowed. Then he drove away. She didn’t even wait five minutes before she called Paul.