He walked out the front door.
I stood in the kitchen for a long time after he left. Then I went to the computer in our home office, sat down, and logged into our bank accounts.
They were empty.
All of them. Checking, savings, the small emergency fund I’d set up when we first got married, the one Nathan used to tease me about. Everything was gone.
I checked the date on the transfers. They’d happened that morning. He’d cleaned us out before he came home.
The next week was a blur. I called Nathan’s phone. It went to voicemail. I called Karine’s. Same. I drove to her apartment in Charlotte and found it empty, a for-rent sign already in the window. I drove to Nathan’s company’s regional office and the receptionist told me he’d resigned 2 weeks ago.
2 weeks.
He’d been playing this out for 2 weeks, maybe longer, while I sat at home thinking I was the one who finally had the upper hand.
I was 33 years old and I had $46 in my personal checking account. The one I’d kept from before we got married, the one I used for coffee and birthday presents. The house was in both our names, but the mortgage was 3 months behind. I didn’t have enough for a payment, let alone a lawyer.
I called my mother.
“He what?” she said when I told her.
“He left with Karine. They took everything.”
There was a long pause. I could picture her in the living room of the house in Asheford, surrounded by the furniture that had belonged to her mother and her grandmother, the portraits on the walls, the china in the cabinets.
“I don’t understand,” she said finally. “How could you let this happen?”
“Let this happen?”
“You must have seen something. Signs. You must have noticed.”
“I did notice. I—”
I stopped, because I had noticed and I hadn’t done anything. Not until it was too late.
“That’s not the point. The point is I need help. I need somewhere to stay. I need—”
“You’re not staying here.”
The words hung in the air.
“What?”
“I said you’re not staying here. This is my home, Margaret. I can’t have—”
She paused. And when she continued, her voice was sharper.
“Do you understand what people will say? What they’re already saying? My daughters, both of them, in this kind of— Mom— you were always so dumb. You never could see what was right in front of you. Your father was the same way. Head in the clouds, no sense of the real world, and look where it got him.”
I hadn’t heard her mention my father in years.
“What does Dad have to do with—”
“I have a garden club meeting. We’ll talk later.”
She hung up.
I tried to stay in the house. I made calls to the mortgage company, explained the situation, begged for extensions. They gave me 60 days. I applied for jobs that paid more than the clinic. Office manager positions, administrative work, anything. But I didn’t have the experience and the interviews went nowhere.
On the 47th day, I came home to find a notice taped to my front door. The bank had started foreclosure proceedings.
I stood on my porch reading the same paragraph over and over and thought about all the ways my life had shrunk. No husband, no sister, no mother who would help me, no money, and now, in 13 days, no home.
I went to the only person I could think of. Amy, my friend in Raleigh, couldn’t take me in. She’d gotten engaged and her fiancé was living with her now, and their apartment was the size of a postage stamp. But she knew someone who knew someone who worked at a women’s shelter in Charlotte. She made some calls.
3 days later, I walked through the doors of the Westfield House with one suitcase and a garbage bag full of clothes.
The intake worker was kind. She asked me questions I was too numb to really process. Did I have family? Did I have income? Did I have any plans? And I answered as best I could. She showed me to a room I’d share with one other woman, a twin bed with sheets that smelled like industrial detergent, a window that looked out onto a parking lot.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall.
This was my life now.
The shelter had rules. Curfew at 10:00, chores on a rotating schedule, group dinners in the common room, weekly meetings with a caseworker who would help you develop a transition plan. My caseworker was a woman named Deborah, mid-50s, with reading glasses on a chain around her neck and the kind of patient manner that suggested she’d heard every story there was to hear.
She didn’t look shocked when I told her what had happened. She just nodded and wrote things down in her file.
“Do you have any income right now?”
“No. I was working at a veterinary clinic, but I had to resign when I moved here. It was too far to commute.”
“Are you looking for work?”
“Yes.”
I had interviews scheduled. I didn’t, but I would.
“Good. In the meantime, you should apply for assistance. Food stamps, emergency aid. I can help you with the paperwork.”
I nodded.
I’d never applied for government assistance in my life. I’d never imagined I would need to.
“There’s no shame in it,” Deborah said, like she could read my mind. “This is what these programs are for. People who need help getting back on their feet.”
I tried to smile.
“Right.”
