Chapter 4: Dad's Kitchen

I paid the $8,200 that night, on a credit card I had never used.

The receipt came back with my name on it, and I read it until the numbers blurred.

On Sunday morning my mother was at church, running the office for the eleven o'clock service.

I knew her schedule better than she knew mine.

I let myself into my parents' house with the key I had never been asked to return.

Dad was in the kitchen in his flannel shirt, squinting at a crossword.

He looked up and his whole face changed.

"Mal."

"Hi, Dad."

He stood up too fast and held the counter.

"Sit," I said. "Please."

He sat.

He poured me coffee in my old mug, the chipped one with the cartoon dog, because he always had.

"Your mother will be home at one," he said.

"Then we have time."

I put my phone on the table and opened my bank history.

"Look at this."

He put on his reading glasses.

I scrolled.

Seven hundred dollars, the first of every month, to Diane VanCott.

I scrolled back one year.

Two years.

Six.

"That's the mortgage," he said, slowly.

"That's the mortgage. And this is Colt's rent. And this is your pharmacy."

Dad did not say anything.

His big, rough finger moved down the screen, line by line.

"Your mother told me my disability covered the house," he said.

"It doesn't."

"She said the extra came from my brother's life insurance."

"His policy paid out nine years ago, Dad. You used it for the roof."

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

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