Five Years a Fool, A Lifetime Apart novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Refused

Margo shows Caleb four years of photos from Cedar Falls and his own card statements; the family group chat already says he has accepted.

Margo's apartment was on the third floor of a brick building, ten minutes from the hospital where she worked.

She put the envelope on the kitchen table and a mug of coffee beside it.

"Open it," she said.

I did not.

I looked at the red ink on the front.

"Did you know my mother-in-law's handwriting before tonight?"

"I grew up in that house until I was nineteen. I know every note she ever left on the refrigerator."

She sat down across from me and put her hands flat on the table.

"I'm not asking you to like me, Caleb. I'm asking you to read the letter and then read these."

She pushed a stack of photographs across the table.

The first one showed a small gray house with a swing set in the yard.

A boy of two sat on the swing, and Dexter stood behind him with one hand on the chain.

The second was a birthday cake with three candles.

Camille was kneeling beside the boy, laughing.

I knew that laugh.

It was the one she had given me at our wedding.

The third showed a cake with four candles, the fourth one with five.

In every picture she looked happy.

"Where is this?" I asked.

"Cedar Falls. Forty minutes north of here."

"How do you know?"

"I drove past it six times. I took these through the fence."

She did not apologize.

"I followed her once on one of her business weeks, because Lorna's cousin had told me she was traveling to see a client in Chicago. She never left the state."

I turned over the last photo.

It had been taken two weeks ago.

Camille stood on the porch of the gray house, heavily pregnant, in the same cream sweater she had worn tonight.

Dexter's hand rested on her belly.

The date stamp said Thursday.

"Thursday is her clinic day," I said.

My voice sounded strange to me.

"She told me the clinic has a no-partners policy. She goes alone."

"Does she?"

I looked at the porch again.

Then I thought: she must have gone to see Jasper.

Of course she had.

She had a son she could not see any other way.

I pushed the photo to the side.

"What else?"

Margo pulled out her phone and opened a county records page.

"The deed is public," she said. "Dexter Lyle bought that house six years ago with a loan from Cedar Falls Home Loans."

"So?"

"So I can't see who pays it. You can see your own bank."

I grabbed my phone.

There was a joint account I had opened for her five years ago, the one she called the travel fund.

She had asked for five thousand a month for her business trips, so she would never have to go to her mother for cash.

I had never looked at what came out of it.

I opened the statements now.

There it was, once a month for five years: forty-nine hundred dollars to Cedar Falls Home Loans.

I ran the numbers twice on the calculator.

Two hundred and ninety-four thousand dollars.

My money had paid for the house where Jasper blew out his candles.

"I want to be sick," I said.

"The bathroom is behind you."

"I'm not going to be sick." I put the phone face down. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because Lorna took everything from me before I was old enough to fight her."

She said it plainly.

"And because I wrote that letter and then I stopped. I should have come to your door."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"You knew for four years."

"Yes."

"Four years of me kissing her goodbye every month."

"Yes."

She did not look away, and she did not cry.

I stood up, and the chair scraped.

I took the envelope, because it was mine, and I left the photographs where they lay.

"Sit," Margo said. "It's one in the morning and you have a bag in my hall. Nobody is going to throw you out."

Before I could answer, my phone shook against the table.

It was the Dunning family group chat, the one with forty-one people on it.

The top message was from Lorna.

Welcome back to the family, Caleb. Sunday dinner at my house, to celebrate the boy.

Under it, in a single second, Camille had sent a red heart.

Then a cousin wrote: Knew he'd do the right thing.

Then another: Finally.

I had said nothing.

I had signed nothing.

To the whole family, I had already said yes.

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