Chapter 2 - The Unraveling Web
By noon, the kitchen table had become an emergency audit station. Elaine refused to leave my side, while Nick sat slumped on the sofa in the adjoining living room, clutching his head in his hands. Every time his phone buzzed with an incoming collection alert, he flinched as though struck.
I sat with my laptop, pulling up our joint bank statements. My hands shook so violently that it took me three attempts to type my password. When the dashboard finally loaded, the numbers confirmed my worst fears. The primary savings account, which held the funds I had methodically deposited from every paycheck over the last two years, read: $142.18.
“He wiped it clean three weeks ago,” I whispered to Elaine, the screen blurring through a veil of hot tears. “He moved ten thousand dollars on September 15th, and another five thousand on October 1st. Every penny I saved for my unpaid maternity leave is gone.”
Elaine sat beside me, placing a warm, steady hand over mine. “Take a deep breath, Anna. Look at me. Nora needs you calm right now. We are going to untangle this line by line.”
I looked over at Nick. “Who is Marcus? Is that the guy from your gym? The one who drives the leased sports car?”
Nick didn't look up from the floor. “He had a platform. An algorithmic trading desk. He showed me the returns on his phone, Anna. He was making eight percent a week. I thought if I put our money in for just forty-five days, I could pull out forty thousand dollars. We could pay off your nursing school debt before Nora took her first breath.”
“You didn’t do it for me!” I shouted, my temper finally snapping through the shock. “You did it for your own pride! You couldn’t stand that I was the one working overtime, that my savings were keeping this family afloat while you bounced between middle-management sales jobs! You wanted to play the big hero, and instead, you left me with two stretched-out shirts and no money to pay the hospital!”
“I didn't think the dress would sell that fast!” Nick pleaded, standing up and taking a tentative step toward me, his arms outstretched. “Tara posted it at midnight on Friday. A woman from Ames messaged her thirty minutes later and sent eighty-five dollars over Venmo. I swear, Anna, I was going to use that money to pay the electric bill on Monday so the lights wouldn't get shut off!”
Hearing him admit that our electricity was on the verge of disconnection made the room feel suffocatingly small. I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, carrying a baby whose arrival was weeks away, and our home was on the brink of total financial collapse.
“Get your things, Nick,” I said, my voice dropping into a low, terrifying calm.
Nick froze. “What?”
“Pack a bag. Get out of this house.”
“Anna, please, you can’t kick me out! It’s my house too!”
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“Her name is on the primary lease, Nicholas,” Elaine intervened, her tone unwavering. “And if you make one more excuse in front of this exhausted girl, I will personally call your father and tell him every single detail of what you’ve done. You will pack a bag and sleep in my basement until Anna decides whether she ever wants to see your face again.”
Nick looked between his mother and me, searching for an ally and finding none. Defeated, he turned toward the stairs, his footsteps heavy and dragging. As he disappeared upstairs, I buried my face in Elaine’s shoulder and let the dam break, sobbing until my ribs ached.
