“I didn’t take all the money,” I said.
Vanessa looked at me. Really looked at me, maybe for the first time.
“He said you did,” she said. “He said you got the house, the savings, everything, and left him with nothing.”
“He kept the boat,” I said. “And his 401(k). And the recliner.” I nodded toward the leather chair in my living room. “We split everything down the middle. A judge approved it.”
Vanessa sat down very slowly in one of my kitchen chairs.
“Mark,” she said. “Did she sign the lease?”
He didn’t answer.
“Did she sign the lease?”
“It doesn’t matter who signed it,” Mark said sharply. “Half this house is mine. That money came from our marriage. Twenty-seven years, Vanessa. I earned it.”
And there it was.
Not a misunderstanding. Not confusion. Not me being emotional.
Just Mark, finally saying out loud the thing he’d believed all along.
