Chapter 4 - ROBERT'S EXPLANATION
Robert called forty-three times in two days.
Claire ignored forty-two.
Then answered.
“What?”
“The mortgage bounced.”
“Pay it.”
“With what?”
Claire laughed.
“Your money.”
Silence.
Then Robert said:
“We budget around your contribution.”
“No. You built your life around it.”
“You agreed.”
“To help. Not finance all of you forever.”
Robert’s voice hardened.
“You lived rent-free.”
Claire nearly dropped the phone.
“I paid twenty-one hundred a month toward the mortgage.”
“That wasn’t rent.”
“What was it?”
“Family.”
There.
A word used as accounting fog.
Then Claire asked about BENNETT HOME RESERVE.
Robert paused.
“What about it?”
“You moved $17,500 of my money into your private account.”
“It was savings.”
“For whom?”
“The family.”
“Why wasn’t my name on it?”
Silence.
Then:
“Because you’re impulsive.”
Claire laughed so hard it sounded like anger.
“Me?”
“You’re emotional right now.”
That phrase.
Classic.
Then Claire asked:
“Does Madison get six hundred dollars a month?”
Robert said:
“She needs help.”
“I pay her phone too.”
“She’s trying to build something.”
“I’m trying to build something.”
“You have a career.”
As if success created obligation.
Then Linda joined the call.
“Claire, sweetheart—”
“No.”
Linda stopped.
“I’m not doing sweetheart today.”
Linda began crying.
“I don’t understand why you’re punishing everyone over a birthday.”
Claire closed her eyes.
May you like
It was not the cake.
The cake was only the first thing they could not explain away once she finally looked.
