He Chose My Sister, So I Left Him With Nothing novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Sunday Dinner

The account is missing $58,000 sent to her parents' marina; she takes the pontoon keys at their Sunday dinner, then learns Dustin filed a note claiming she gave him half the company.

I opened the banking app standing in the gravel with the gate still swinging.

The balance should have said eighty-one thousand.

It said twenty-three thousand and change.

I scrolled down.

Five transfers in six days. Ten thousand, twelve, fifteen, eleven, ten.

Every one went to the same account.

Buckley Marina and Bait.

Every one was approved under Dustin's vendor login, the one I gave him so he could pay for shells.

Patty read it over my shoulder and said a word I'd never heard her say indoors.

"That's the Labor Day shell money," she said.

"I know what it is."

"Kid. That's the season."

"I know."

I didn't sleep.

I sat at the office desk until the sun came up, printing every transfer and lining the pages up by date.

The first one went out on Monday, the day Mom called to ask what color my dress would be.

At six, Patty made eggs on the hot plate and put a fork in my hand.

"Eat. Then go do whatever you're going to do."

"You don't know what I'm going to do."

"It's Sunday," she said. "You're going to dinner."

The Buckleys have had Sunday dinner on the marina deck at five o'clock every week for twenty-one years.

I used to set the table.

I drove over at five fifteen in a clean work shirt with the printouts in a folder.

The marina hadn't changed since I was eight.

Faded blue siding, a bait cooler humming by the door, a rack of rental life jackets nobody had washed since spring.

There were six rental pontoons tied along the dock.

Two families were coming in off the water, sunburned, handing back keys.

The neighbors from both sides were on the deck with paper plates. They always came on Sundays.

Mom was cutting a cake.

It said "Welcome Baby" in yellow icing.

Chelsea was at the head of the table with her feet up on a cooler.

Dustin wasn't there. I found out later he was at the yacht club, telling people I'd had a breakdown.

Dad saw me first.

He put down his fork. "Nadine. We weren't sure you'd come."

"I wasn't sure either."

Mom smiled like nothing had happened. "There's a plate. Sit."

"I'm not staying."

I put the folder on the table between the potato salad and the cake.

"Fifty-eight thousand dollars left my company account last week. All of it landed here."

The neighbors stopped chewing.

Dad didn't even open the folder.

"That's a loan," he said.

"A loan has paperwork. A loan has my signature."

"It's a loan against everything we've given you." He said it calmly, like it was obvious. "Twenty-one years of food. Braces. That car when you turned sixteen."

"The car was nine hundred dollars and I paid you back by Christmas."

"Don't be petty."

Mom set down the cake knife.

"Your father had to make payroll on the docks. The bank was calling. Dustin offered."

"Dustin offered my money."

"Dustin is family."

"As of last night."

Chelsea rolled her eyes and picked up her phone. She was filming.

I didn't care.

"I want it back," I said. "All of it."

Dad laughed, short and ugly. "With what? It's spent. The slip fees are paid. The bait order's paid."

"Then I'll take collateral."

I walked to the board by the bait cooler where the rental keys hung on cup hooks.

Six pontoons. Six keys on orange floats.

I took them down one by one.

Behind me a neighbor said, "Oh, boy," very softly.

"Put those back," Dad said.

"Each one's worth about ten thousand used. That's sixty. I'll give you two back when you pay."

"You can't take our boats."

"I'm not taking the boats. I'm holding the keys. That's what collateral is."

Mom stood up so fast her chair tipped over.

"After everything we sacrificed. You walk in here on a Sunday and humiliate your father in front of the whole dock?"

"You played my sister's ultrasound at my engagement party," I said. "We're past humiliation, Mom."

A family in matching sunburns came up the dock just then with a cooler and a kid on each hip.

"Hi," the dad said to me, because I was holding the keys. "We had the four o'clock boat for tomorrow?"

"Call this number Monday," I said, and gave him my card.

Chelsea snorted from the table. "She's literally robbing us. I'm posting this."

"Post it," I said. "Tag the bank."

I walked back up the dock with sixty thousand dollars of keys jangling in my fist.

Nobody followed me.

My hands didn't start shaking until I was in the truck again.

I put the keys in the glove box.

I put my forehead on the steering wheel and let myself cry for exactly as long as the radio song lasted.

Then my phone buzzed.

It was a text from a woman on the town council. I'd done her daughter's wedding two summers ago.

"Nadine, I'm so sorry about last night. I have to warn you. Dustin emailed a note to the town clerk this morning."

A second text came while I was reading the first.

"It's signed by you. It says you gave him half of Blue Hour as an engagement gift."

Then a third.

"The council's reassigning the Labor Day contract at a public hearing Friday. Seven p.m. Town hall."

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