“Because I thought I could fix it. I thought if I just…” He stopped and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done.”
“There will be other deals.”
“You don’t understand.” His voice cracked, just slightly. “There aren’t other deals. There haven’t been in a while. The market’s bad. The financing dried up. And I…” He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “I think I’m in trouble.”
I went to him then, put my arms around him, felt him stiffen and then slowly fold into me.
“How bad?”
His voice came muffled against my shoulder.
“Bad. I’ve been covering payroll out of our savings. I had to let Marcus go last week. That new office space? I signed a lease I can’t afford because I thought Brennan was going to close and now it didn’t and I don’t know how to…”
He broke off. I held him tighter.
“We’ll figure it out. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together.”
He pulled away and looked at me, and for one fleeting second there was something in his face I didn’t know how to place. Shame maybe. Fear. Something close to collapse.
“I can’t tell my parents.”
“Why not?”
He let out a laugh, bitter and joyless.
“You don’t know them. Not really. They have this idea of who I am, who I’m supposed to be. If they find out I failed…”
“You didn’t fail. The market collapsed.”
“They won’t see it that way.” He started pacing. “My dad gave me money when I started the business. It was supposed to be an investment, but really it was… a test. Every quarter, I send them a check. A dividend. Because that’s what I’m supposed to do. That’s what a successful son does. And if I stop…”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “You’ve been sending your parents money? Out of your business?”
“It’s not like that. It’s their investment. They’re entitled to returns.”
“Returns? David, if your business is collapsing, they don’t just keep taking money from you.”
“They’re not taking.” Then he said it, the phrase I had heard from Constance in a hundred different forms.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Help me understand.”
But he didn’t. He just shook his head and went back to bed. I stayed in the kitchen after he left, trying to piece together what he had just told me. I should have asked to see the books then. I should have demanded full access. Part of me still trusted him. Another part did not want to see the whole truth. The next few months were a lesson in controlled collapse. David was right about the market. Commercial real estate was brutal that year, and his firm wasn’t the only one struggling. But unlike the bigger agencies, David didn’t have reserves. He let his second agent go. Sublet the office space at a loss. Started working from home three days a week to save overhead. I would come back from work and find him in the spare bedroom, hunched over a laptop, buried in files and stale coffee. And every quarter, he still sent his parents a check. I argued with him about it. I explained again and again that we could not keep feeding a fiction while our own accounts bled. He got defensive, then angry, then quiet. It became a pattern. I pushed, he retreated, and then we spent two or three days moving around each other like strangers. I began asking about the accounts more directly. He said he would show me later. Later never came. Once, when I pressed harder, he snapped and said if I wanted to control the money I should have married an accountant. I backed off. I shouldn’t have. What I did not know then, what I would only discover much later, was that our savings were already gone. The quarterly checks to his parents were not coming from what was left in our account. They were coming from a line of credit he had opened in both our names without telling me. The statements went to his office. I never saw them. That revelation was still waiting for me. In the meantime, Constance and Robert went on with their lives. We saw them at Easter. At Robert’s birthday dinner in May. At a Fourth of July barbecue at their place where Constance complained that the caterer had used the wrong napkins. They never once mentioned David’s business. Robert made vague comments sometimes about the market being tough for everyone, but he said it like someone talking about humidity, as if economic conditions were something that existed in theory and happened to other people. As far as they were concerned, nothing had changed. Why would it? Their quarterly checks were still arriving. Then, one Saturday afternoon in August, my mother called and asked if I could come over. Just me. She had something she wanted to discuss. I drove to her house. The plastic deer were still in the neighbors’ yards. The driveway had a new crack in it that she had probably already priced out a repair for. She met me at the door with tea and led me to the kitchen table.
“Your husband called me,” she said.
I set down my cup.
“He what?”
“Three weeks ago. He asked me for money.”
I just stared at her.
“He said it was temporary. A bridge loan, he called it. Just until things improved.”
“Mom.” My voice came out as a whisper. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“I did.”
The kitchen suddenly felt too small, too close.
“How much?”
“Thirty thousand.”
