The New Husband(23)
“I’m guessing that was a mistake.”
“Quite. You see, Glen and I established a division of labor. I took care of the house stuff—the kids, the meals, shopping, that sort of thing—and he did the bills and filed all our financial statements. I had a general idea of what we had, but I really only paid attention to what was in the checking account. Those numbers went down and then up every two weeks as he got paid.
“He made a good living, but it wasn’t a windfall. He still worried about money all the time, which is why he pushed himself so hard at work to get a promotion, maybe stock options, you know the routine.”
Nina hadn’t bothered with all the details, but after the 401(k) contribution, money Glen put in the stock market, taxes, food, utilities, home repair, insurance, what little they gave to charity, the occasional vacation, the random charges that seemed impossible not to rack up on the credit card—new clothes for Connor, summer camp for Mags, sports camps for Connor, fitness clubs, doctor, dentist, car payments, auto repair, all the random stuff—maybe they had four thousand dollars or so available in disposable income at the end of the year.
Maybe.
“And I thought of what they told me—two years, he’d been fired two years ago. I was thinking, hoping really, that he had a secret job to go along with his secret girlfriend and secret life in Carson.”
“Did he?”
“No. He didn’t.” Nina grimaced. “I went through all the bank statements, all of our investments. I thought we’d saved about two hundred thousand dollars, maybe more, but there was only forty grand in all the investment accounts, including the 401(k).”
“What happened to the money?” Dr. Wilcox asked.
“It seems Glen drained our investments like he was running a mini Ponzi scheme. He took from one account to give to another, college funds included, all to hide the fact that he’d lost his job. We had about enough money to last us a year, but not much more. He even bought us pricey health insurance after the COBRA ran out, to keep up appearances.”
Nina paused here, processing a thought. “It made me wonder,” she said, “for a man with so many secrets, if maybe he’d done something else, something at his job, the reason he got fired, that had made it necessary for him to disappear.”
“Do you know the reason?”
“No,” Nina said grimly. “I eventually got them to send me some paperwork, because death in absentia takes ages to process. What they sent was vague at best—they cited ‘underperformance’ as the reason for firing him. I know as much about Glen—his motives, his choices, his fate—now as I did back then.”
Dr. Wilcox returned a grim expression of sympathy. “How are your finances now?”
“Now? Well, with Simon they’ve gotten a whole lot better. Without him in the picture, I would’ve had to move away, go live with my parents, no choice there. That would have been okay, but I love Seabury and didn’t want to leave. Anyway, Simon has family money, he told me, and his teacher salary, plus rental income from his lakefront home. For the most part we’ve kept our finances separate, but now you could say my finances have gotten another boost.”
“How so?”
“I got a job. I’m going to be working with The Davis Family Center doing social work. The offer came yesterday.”
Dr. Wilcox brightened. “That’s wonderful news,” she said.
“Simon’s concerned. He thinks it’s going to be too much on me, and hard on Maggie not to have me as available.”
“What do you think you should do?”
Nina thought about how to put her feelings into words.
“I won’t be making a fortune, but it would be something. And it would be mine.”
“That must feel good.”
Dr. Wilcox was doing her job—leading Nina to her own conclusions, not clouding things with pre-judgment.
“Yes. It feels quite good. I trusted a man with my family’s financial future once before; I’m reluctant to do it again.”
“Then I guess you know what to do.”
Nina gave a nod. For the first time in a long time, she felt certain of a decision.
CHAPTER 13
Mom glared at me from across the dinner table like I should snap out of it or something. Sure, I had a sourpuss face, but she should have been used to it by now. After all, it’s been my default expression since everything fell apart. Connor was a lost cause—too angry with Dad and too enamored with Simon (and their dumb robot that still didn’t work) to see things clearly. At least I had Ben on my side.
It was amazing, really. I never would have given a kid like Ben the time of day before I got tossed out of my tribe. Not because I was stuck up or anything, but we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Thanks to a little bit of bullying (okay, a lot) I could see now what I couldn’t see then. We were just people, with different interests, different tastes, and if you closed yourself off to people different from yourself, you might be missing out on something great. Super mature of me, I know. My guidance counselor would be so proud.
I knew Mom thought Ben was going to be the answer to all her prayers, but having someone to eat lunch with didn’t change my feelings about Simon, not one little bit. He could cook all the yummy dinners he wanted—like the chicken he made tonight, with fluffy biscuits to soak up the thick gravy—and I’d still want him gone. He could play catch with Connor until he got all-state honors and I’d still want to go to boarding school, or move in with Nonni and Papa. And now I had a new reason, a better reason to want Simon out of here, and gone for good: I’d seen the look in his eyes.