Called a Gold Digger, I Returned Everything novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Statement
At Dalton's birthday dinner his best friend hands round a bill for $412,860 in my name, and I decide to give every cent back, until I see the date of the first charge.
Lucinda stood up at Dalton's birthday dinner and asked everyone not to hate her for what she was about to do.
There were fourteen of us in the private room of the steakhouse.
Her eyes were wet.
She held a cream folder against her chest.
"I love you both," she said. "That's the only reason I'm doing this."
Dalton looked up from his plate.
He was thirty-two tonight, and he had barely touched his cake.
Lucinda opened the folder and passed a stack of sheets down the table.
Each person took one and passed it on.
When mine reached me, I read the top line twice.
Spent on Susie Sedlak since October, three years ago: $412,860.
Under it was a list.
A sapphire pendant. Flights to Lisbon and Cabo. Four hotel suites. A year's lease on a loft in Lincoln Park.
I had never been to Lisbon.
I had never seen the loft.
"His accountant needs the numbers on Monday," Lucinda said softly. "I couldn't let Dalton walk into that blind. Susie, sweetheart, I'm so sorry."
Across from me, a man in a green tie leaned back in his chair.
"Three years of not taking anything," he said. "I always said it was a long game."
His wife laughed behind her napkin.
Another woman tilted her sheet toward the light.
"Four hundred thousand," she said. "That's not a girlfriend. That's a salary."
I put my fork down.
I had spent three years at this table being looked at.
Every birthday, every holiday, every Sunday brunch, they watched my hands to see what I would reach for.
I had never reached for anything.
I paid half of every dinner I could. When he paid, I wrote it down at home.
"I have never taken a dollar from him," I said.
My voice came out steady, and I was proud of that.
Lucinda tilted her head and gave me the kindest look in the room.
"Honey, I'd believe you," she said. "If the card said that."
Dalton hadn't moved.
He was holding the sheet in both hands.
I waited for him to say her name, or mine, or anything.
He kept reading.
Lucinda reached over and touched my wrist.
She had done it a hundred times, and tonight it felt like being weighed.
"Nobody here is angry," she said. "We just want you to be honest."
I looked at the hand on my wrist.
On my own hand, the thin gold band with the clear stone caught the candlelight.
Lucinda had held it up to a lamp once, at somebody's Christmas party, and called it the prettiest piece of glass she'd ever seen.
"Fifteen dollars," I'd said. "And I paid half. Seven dollars and fifty cents, in quarters."
Everyone had laughed then, and Dalton had gone red to the ears.
Nobody was laughing now.
"Dalton," I said.
He finally lifted his eyes.
They were grey, and they didn't look at me.
They looked like he was trying to do a sum.
"Susie," he said. His voice was low. "Tell me you didn't."
The room went quiet enough to hear the ice in the water jug.
I had waited three years for him to say one sentence in front of these people.
This was the sentence he had picked.
I thought of every Sunday brunch, and every time I had told myself he was just shy.
"You're asking me to prove it," I said.
"I'm asking you to tell me."
"I just did."
He opened his mouth and closed it again.
Lucinda sniffled and pressed a tissue under her eye.
"It's all right, Dal," she said. "She's scared. Anyone would be."
I stood up.
My chair scraped the floor, and fourteen faces turned with it.
"I'm going to give it all back," I said. "Everything he has ever paid for."
"Susie, that's not necessary," Lucinda said gently.
"It is for me."
The man in the green tie smiled into his wine.
"With what?" he said.
I picked up my coat.
I didn't answer him.
So I stepped out.
The parking lot was freezing, and my breath hung in front of me.
I had made it to the bus shelter when I heard his shoes on the pavement.
"Susie. Wait."
Dalton had no coat on.
His tie was pulled loose and his hair was wrecked from his hands.
"Don't go," he said. "Let me fix this."
"Which part?"
"All of it. Just come back inside."
"Back to the table where you asked me to prove I wasn't a thief?"
"I wanted to hear you say it wasn't true."
"I said it. Out loud. Twice."
He looked at the ground.
That was what he did when he was hurt.
He went silent, and I had spent three years calling it a kind of gentleness.
"I'll bring it all back," I said. "Every dinner. Every dollar."
"I don't want it back."
"I know," I said. "That's what makes it mine to give."
The bus pulled up and the doors folded open.
I got on without looking behind me.
I took a seat at the back and pulled out my phone.
I had taken a picture of Lucinda's sheet under the table without thinking.
I zoomed in on the first line of the list.
Sapphire pendant. $18,400.
Next to it was the date it had been bought.
October 3rd.
I had met Dalton Cudahy on October 12th.
Nine days later.
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