Chapter 3
In this city, 800 dollars was the standard monthly living allowance for college interns.
I sat there for a long time, clutching the stack of papers. People were calling out numbers and filling out forms nearby.
No one looked at me.
My phone buzzed. It was a message from Andrew.
Andrew: [What do you want for dinner tonight? I'll grab some groceries after work.]
I stared at his message, lost in thought.
He always started like this whenever he volunteered to buy groceries. His tone was always so gentle that I couldn't really complain.
Before, I'd reply, [Anything, just get whatever you like.]
But today, I just typed, [Up to you.]
Andrew shot back a smiley emoji almost instantly.
I slipped my phone into my bag, carefully folded up the twenty-three pages of bank statements, and tucked them away in the deepest pocket.
When I stepped out of the bank, the sun was blazing.
Next to it was a real estate agency.
The windows were plastered with listings.
One sign read: [Fully renovated two-bedroom apartment, down payment starting at 60 thousand dollars.]
I lingered by the entrance for five seconds.
Then I turned and walked away.
When I got home that evening, Andrew was in the kitchen. He'd bought some beef.
"The supermarket had a sale today. Beef was five dollars a pound," he said, waving the receipt at me.
"It's been ages since we had beef," he added.
"Yeah," I replied, slipping off my shoes and putting on my slippers.
He brought the beef to the table. They were stewed and looked pretty good
I picked up a piece.
Andrew watched me, a hint of anticipation in his eyes.
"Is it good?" he asked.
"Yeah, it's good," I said.
"Then have some more," he said with a smile.
It was the same smile as five years ago.
His smile was so considerate and gentle that I couldn't find a single flaw.
I grabbed another piece of beef.
I did the math. Five dollars a pound, and two pounds was ten dollars.
That was less than one percent of the 1.3 thousand he deducted from my card every month.
I wondered if this dinner was his way of making it up to me.
Or was he just investing in me?
After dinner, Andrew washed the dishes while I lounged in the living room.
There was a budget notebook sitting on the coffee table.
I kept track of everything.
I started jotting things down from the very first month we got married.
It wrote: cabbage, forty cents. Carrots, seventy cents. Eggs, a buck fifty a pound. Laundry detergent, three fifty. I wrote down every little thing.
Nothing ever slipped through. Every expense was right there, clear as day.
Five years, five notebooks stacked up on the table.
I flipped open the newest one.
Last month's total spending was 540 dollars.
The biggest expense was a 20-dollar thermos for Andrew. His old one was leaking.
The smallest was less than a dollar to top up the bus card.
I got by on 540 dollars a month.
Every month, he took 1.3 thousand from me.
I closed the notebook.
That night, I couldn't sleep again. But this time, it wasn't because I was feeling restless.
It was because I couldn't stop thinking about one thing.
I was dying to know what that 1.3 thousand dollars was really for.
I wondered if it was for the mortgage.
Was he paying off his ex-wife's mortgage? Using my card?
And he'd been doing this since the second month we got married.
I wondered when he had linked my card.
He picked the password for my bank card.
Before we got married, he said, "Let me give you a password that's easy to remember. If you ever forget it, I can help you out."
Back then, I thought that was so thoughtful of him.
When thinking about it, it wasn't about helping me remember my password.
He just wanted my password.
It took me three days to confirm one thing.
On the fifteenth of each month, an automatic payment was sent. The recipient was Bonnie Curry, and it was for the mortgage.
The linked bank card was the one where my salary got deposited.
The automatic payment was set up on October 6th, five years ago.
I tried to remember what I was doing on that day.
I flipped through the photos on my phone.
Five years ago, on October 6th, during the holiday weekend, Andrew and I went back to his hometown.
Emma had made a whole spread. Andrew took a picture and posted it online, saying, [Feels good to be home.]
I was in that shot, too, wearing a navy hoodie, smiling like I didn't have a care in the world.
That night, Andrew said, "Can I borrow your phone? Mine's dead."
I handed it over.
He gave it back to me the next morning.
Everything seemed normal.
I only just found out what he did with my phone that night.
It was the holiday weekend, at Emma's place, with the whole family around.
When he took my phone from me, he even flashed a smile and said, "Thanks, honey."
Now that I remembered it, I just felt totally disgusted.
Confirming the recipient wasn't hard. I went to the bank to check.
The teller was very polite.
She said, "Ma'am, this is an automatic payment for a mortgage. The loan is under the name of Bonnie Curry.
"If you want to cancel the auto-payment, you'll need to bring your ID and come in person.
"Who set up this auto-payment?" I asked.
The teller looked it up. "The system says you set it up yourself on your phone."
Yeah, that figured. Andrew used my phone and my password.