Chapter 3

Sunday afternoon, Roxanna came over with Lily.

"Hey, Elizabeth, you home?" she called, knocking on the door. She carried a bag of fruit. "Lily wanted to see you."

Lily always liked me. She liked sitting with me while I braided her hair.

"Come in," I said.

Roxanna sat down with a gentle smile. "Don't let yesterday get to you. David's just straightforward. He doesn't think too much."

"Yeah," I said.

"He probably just feels bad that I'm on my own with Lily, so he tries to help out more. Really, don't take it to heart," she said casually.

She looked calm, open, the same as always. But something on her wrist caught my eye. It was a bracelet with a small charm hanging from it, the letter "D."

D. David.

My gaze stayed there a second too long. Roxanna noticed and pulled her hand back slightly.

"Is that new?" I asked.

"Yeah... just something I picked up online. Really cheap," she said. She smiled, but it didn't quite hold.

Lily spoke up, "Mom, Uncle David gave you that!"

The room went quiet.

Roxanna's face drained of color. "Lily, don't make things up," she said, tapping her lightly. "I bought it myself."

Lily frowned. "No, I saw it. He gave it to you—"

"Alright, go play," Roxanna cut her off quickly.

She looked at me for a split second. Something flickered in her eyes, then disappeared.

"Enjoy the fruit," she said. "We'll head out." She took Lily's hand and left in a hurry, moving much faster than before.

I closed the door and stood there.

"Uncle David gave you that."

Kids wouldn't make things like that up.

*****

Monday at work, I just couldn't focus. My mind was all over the place. During my lunch break, I did something I'd never done before. I checked David's bank records.

David and I kept our salary accounts separate. My paycheck went into my own account, and his went into his.

But we did have a joint savings account, set up when we got married. That was the one we used for the mortgage and utility bills.

I knew the online banking password. I opened the banking app. The balance: 1600 dollars.

With the extra 2,600 I put in last month, minus the fixed expenses, the balance should have been 2400. There were 800 dollars missing from the account.

I checked the transaction details. There was a transfer of 800 dollars sent out. The recipient was Roxanna.

I stared at that name for a full minute.

He transferred 800 dollars to Roxanna from our joint account.

I kept digging through the records.

Two months ago, 1,000 dollars was sent to Roxanna. The month before, 700 dollars to Roxanna. Going back even further, 800 dollars to Roxanna.

I kept digging, all the way back to a year ago. Every single month, without fail. At least 600 dollars, sometimes up to 1,500.

I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down every transaction, one by one. After adding everything up, the total came to 12,500 dollars.

And that was just the joint account. I had no clue what was happening with his salary account. But that joint account had my money in it, too.

I put 2,600 dollars into the joint account every month, and he put in 1,500. He used our shared money to transfer 12,500 dollars to Roxanna. So, over 8,000 dollars of that was actually mine.

I sat in my office, my hands shaking. It wasn't fear. It was anger.

I took a half-day off work.

When I got home, David wasn't there. I started searching through his stuff. I searched the closet, the desk, the nightstand, and everywhere else. I didn't really know what I was searching for. Maybe I was just hoping for an answer.

In the second drawer of the nightstand, I found a Lysara receipt dated two months ago for a total of four thousand dollars.

I had never gotten anything from Lysara.

I thought of the bracelet on Roxanna's wrist. It was silver, with the letter "D" hanging. It was a Lysara letter series bracelet, retailing for 4,000 to 5,000 dollars. It definitely wasn't cheap. David bought it for her.

I snapped a photo of the receipt and slipped it back into the drawer.

Then I sat at my computer, determined to get some answers, and tried logging into David's WhatsApp on the web.

But it required me to scan a QR code with his phone, so I couldn't get in. I gave his email a shot next. The password didn't work.

I thought for a second and then opened PayPal. David had given me his password before. He needed me to pay the utility bill for him once. The password was still the same, so I got in.

I checked his transactions.

I started scrolling through the most recent transactions. Over the past three weeks, David had sent Roxanna eight hundred dollars, then five hundred, and then another thousand. The last transfer came with a note that said, "For Lily's new clothes."

I kept scrolling back. Month after month, I scrolled through the transactions. Each month, it was never less than one thousand, sometimes as much as two or three thousand.

I kept scrolling until I hit two years ago. It turned out that he started sending money to Roxanna two years ago. It had been two years.

I sat down with a calculator and painstakingly added up every single transfer.

The 12,500 dollars from our joint account plus all the PayPal transactions added up to 50,000 dollars.

Over three years, I spent 100,000 on the renovation. Monthly deposits of 2,600 into our joint account added up to 93,600. Monthly payments of 1,000 to Linda for her living expenses came to 36,000.

Then I paid 4,000 for Linda's caregiver during her hospital stay. The total was 230,000 dollars.

I had poured 230,000 dollars into this family. And all the while, he had been secretly spending almost 50,000 dollars on Roxanna. Add in that 4,000-dollar bracelet, plus all those cash payments I never even caught, at a minimum, it was 60,000 dollars.

I stared at the numbers on the calculator, feeling a wave of disbelief wash over me. 230,000 versus 60,000.

I paid to keep this family running. He spent his money on another woman.

*****

I sat alone in the living room for a long time. The room grew dark, but I didn't bother turning on the lights. I kept turning one question over in my mind.

Did Michael know?

He was always traveling for work, hardly ever home. Did he have any clue that his own brother had been sending money to his wife, buying her Lysara jewelry, and cracking crab legs for her at every family dinner?

And then there was Linda. Did she know?

I remembered what Linda once said, "David was just being considerate. Roxanna was raising her child alone, and it was not easy for her. So what if he took a little extra care of her?"

Did she really not know, or was she covering for David?]

That question gnawed at me. I needed an answer.