Margaret answered:
“That’s confidential.”
I looked at her.
“You’re asking me for seventy-two thousand dollars.”
“And your business membership numbers are confidential?”
Her face hardened.
“You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make generosity feel like an audit.”
“That’s because every time you say ‘temporary,’ money disappears.”
Adrian slapped his palm against the table.
Not hard.
But enough.
“Claire.”
I looked at him.
He lowered his voice.
“My mother supported me when nobody else did.”
That sentence was supposed to shame me.
Instead, it clarified something.
“I supported you too.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
When Adrian’s consulting firm failed six years earlier, I covered our living expenses for almost a year.
I paid the health insurance.
The property taxes.
His car payments for four months.
I lent money to a new company he later closed without ever repaying me.
When Margaret needed extensive dental work, I paid.
