Courtney called me on Saturday morning.
She’d found the pawn ticket in the inside pocket of Bradley’s sport coat. Once she started looking at their accounts, she found a lot of other things.
His biggest client had left in the spring. The business had been losing money for a year before that.
There was a second mortgage she hadn’t known about, and four credit cards she’d never seen. The “working from home” had been him in the garage, calling old clients who didn’t call back.
He’d sold his car. He’d pawned the bracelet for six thousand dollars to make a payment that was overdue.
And when she’d asked him about it, he had told her he’d planned to “get it back before she noticed,” and that if she’d just “let it go and fired Maureen,” nobody would have been hurt.
“He said that,” Courtney said on the phone. “Out loud. Like it was a reasonable plan.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I need to ask you something,” she said. “I have the ticket. I need to go get it back. I don’t... I don’t want to go in there alone. Would you drive me?”
I almost said no. I had every right to.
But I thought about Sophie at nineteen and Jack at seventeen, and how they’d hear about all of this, and I thought about twenty years.
“Monday,” I said. “Ten-thirty.”
On Sunday afternoon, my phone rang again. It was Sophie, calling from her dorm.
“Maureen?” Her voice was wobbly. “Dad called me. He said you’ve been getting confused lately. He said you mixed up some days and said something to Mom that wasn’t true, and that it’s not your fault, it’s just your age, and we should all be really gentle with you.”
I sat down at my kitchen table.
“Is that what he said, honey?”
“He said Mom might have to let you go. For your own good.” She was crying a little now. “Is it true? Are you sick?”
“I’m not sick, Sophie. And I’m not confused.”
“Then what happened?”
“That’s for your mother to tell you,” I said. “Not me. Call her. Ask her to show you my notebook.”
She called her mother. I know because Courtney called me an hour later, so angry her voice shook.
“He told the kids you were losing your memory,” she said. “He tried to get ahead of it. With my children. With your name.”
“I know,” I said. “Sophie called me first.”
“I showed her the notebook page. And the ticket. And the bank statements.” She was quiet for a second. “She’s nineteen, Maureen. She shouldn’t have to see her father’s bank statements.”
“No,” I said. “But she shouldn’t have to think I’m losing my mind, either.”
That was the last thing Bradley tried. After that, there was nobody left in the family who believed him.
There was still the pawn shop. And I still didn’t have Frank.
