Chapter 2 - HE ALREADY KNEW
Andrew arrived at our townhouse shortly after ten that night.
Nina was asleep in my bed wearing one of my T-shirts.
I had packed our things from his parents’ house, driven home despite the industrial fans still roaring downstairs, and made Nina macaroni and cheese on a folding table in the bedroom.
Andrew stopped in the doorway.
“You brought her back here?”
“There’s one usable bathroom and half the ceiling is open. So yes.”
He dropped his keys.
“Elena, Mom shouldn’t have thrown the clothes out.”
“Shouldn’t have?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
Andrew had spent twelve years perfecting the expression of a reasonable man trapped between unreasonable women.
I used to mistake it for patience.
“When did you know?”
His hands stopped.
“Know what?”
“That your mother was going through Nina’s clothes.”
He looked toward the hallway.
That was enough.
“How long?”
“She said she was going to buy Nina some nicer things.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Andrew exhaled.
“Yesterday.”
I stared at him.
“You knew.”
“I didn’t know she’d donate everything.”
“But you knew she was going into Nina’s room.”
“I told Mom Nina needed something nicer for the Founders Dinner next month. That’s all.”
Whitmore Millwork held the dinner every September for customers, vendors, and employees. Charles treated it like a coronation.
“And Nina needed changing for that?”
“Come on, Elena. Dad’s biggest clients will be there.”
“She’s eight.”
“You know how my parents are.”
There it was.
The sentence that had excused nearly everything for seven years.
You know how they are.
Sylvia criticizing my accent even though I was born in Kentucky.
Charles joking that my divorced mother had raised me with “Walmart manners.”
Vivian getting horseback-riding lessons while Nina received department-store gift cards because Sylvia said she was “hard to shop for.”
I had swallowed all of it because Andrew always promised it was easier than fighting.
Then he said something that made the entire conversation tilt.
“Dad has enough pressure right now without you creating another family problem.”
“What pressure?”
Andrew hesitated.
“The company.”
Whitmore Millwork employed forty-seven people and built custom interiors for hotels and medical offices across Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.
For eighteen months, cash had been tight.
I knew that better than Charles did.
What Charles called a commercial credit facility came through North River Capital.
What he didn’t know was that North River’s largest funding vehicle belonged to me.
Andrew had asked me to keep that private.
His father, he said, would never accept being rescued by his daughter-in-law.
So I had.
“What does the company have to do with Nina’s clothes?”
“Nothing.”
He answered too quickly.
Then his phone lit up on the dresser.
A message preview appeared.
DAD: Did she calm down? We need her cooperative until renewal.
Andrew grabbed the phone.
Too late.
I had already read it.
“Renewal of what?” I asked.
Andrew didn’t answer.
May you like
But I knew exactly which loan came up for renewal in six weeks.
Mine.
