I Stopped Fighting For My Husband and He Panicked novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Eighty-Four Thousand

On Monday at ten, we stood in the lobby of the same bank where Cory had begged me to come home while strangers watched.

Kat had come, and so had my lawyer, with a folder under one arm.

Wyatt had stayed in the truck.

"I'm not her witness today," he'd said. "I'm her ride."

The teller from that first Saturday looked up from behind the glass.

She knew me at once, and her eyebrows went up.

"Is he coming today?" she asked, with great care.

"No," I said. "I don't think he'll be coming back."

"Good morning, then," she said, and I could have kissed her.

At two minutes past the hour, the door opened and Cory's mother came in.

She wore a plain gray coat this time, with no pearls, and she carried a long envelope in both hands.

She looked as though she had not slept since Saturday.

My lawyer stepped between us. "Thank you for coming," she said.

"I'd like to say something to Cassia, if I may."

"You may."

She faced me, and she did not try to smile.

"I went home Saturday night," she said. "I asked my son for his phone, and he gave it to me. He was too frightened to refuse."

I said nothing.

"I watched the folder," she said. "All of it, from the first second of each one, the way you told me. I got through nineteen before I had to stop."

"I'm sorry."

"No." She shook her head. "Don't be. I raised him to do that, or I let him learn it, and I called it charm."

Kat looked at the ceiling very hard.

"This is a cashier's check for sixty-two thousand dollars," Cory's mother said. "It's from my own account. It isn't a gift, and it isn't a favor, and he doesn't get to know I did it."

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