Chapter 7 – The Payments Nobody Was Supposed to See

“She told you I lost my job?”

Katie stood in the study doorway.

She had returned because she’d forgotten her bus pass on the side table.

Marcus turned.

“Sweetheart, I thought you’d left.”

“I was about to.”

She looked at the statement in his hand.

“When did Evelyn tell you that?”

“Nearly three years ago.”

Katie shook her head.

“I’ve never been fired from a job.”

Marcus glanced toward Evelyn.

“She said the daycare had closed temporarily, and you were embarrassed to ask for help.”

Evelyn looked at the floor.

Katie’s expression hardened.

“That was the month I got promoted to lead teacher.”

Marcus went still.

“You did?”

“Yes.”

He looked almost ashamed.

“I didn’t know.”

“You would have, if we’d been talking.”

He accepted the words.

Katie stepped farther into the room.

“Where did the two thousand dollars go?”

Marcus showed her the statement.

“Into the education reserve.”

“Why?”

“I wanted you to have a little cushion. I asked Evelyn to make sure it was available if you needed it.”

Katie studied the transaction.

“So you thought I was unemployed, and you sent money to help me.”

“Yes.”

She looked at Evelyn.

“And you told me Dad was upset because I hadn’t paid enough.”

Evelyn’s voice was strained.

“I was trying to encourage you to manage your finances.”

Katie stared at her.

“You had both of us giving you money for the same account.”

Nobody answered.

Marcus placed the statement on the desk.

“Lauren, would you mind getting Katie some water?”

I went to the kitchen and returned with a glass.

Katie took it with both hands.

“Thank you.”

She drank slowly.

Then she looked at Marcus.

“I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer without trying to protect me.”

“Go ahead.”

“Did you ever tell Evelyn you wished you hadn’t taken me in?”

Marcus’s face changed.

“No.”

“Not even when we argued?”

“No.”

“Not when I wanted to leave college?”

“We argued because I thought you were giving up on something important. That wasn’t about regretting you.”

Katie nodded.

“I remember the argument.”

“So do I.”

“You said I was running away from hard things.”

“I did.”

“And I said you didn’t understand what it felt like to be the poorest person in a room full of rich people.”

Marcus gave a sad smile.

“You were right about that.”

“I wasn’t right about everything.”

“No,” he agreed. “Neither was I.”

Katie sat.

“I wanted to study early childhood education because of my mom. She worked with children. She used to say a child could tell whether an adult meant what they said.”

Marcus listened.

“But the college program I first enrolled in wasn’t right for me. I hated it. I was afraid to tell you because you’d paid so much.”

“I wish you had.”

“I know.”

She looked at Evelyn.

“That’s when you started telling me I should reimburse him.”

Evelyn folded her hands.

“You were talking about leaving school with no plan.”

“I had a plan. I wanted to work for a while and apply somewhere else.”

“You changed your mind constantly.”

“I was twenty-one.”

There was no anger in the way Katie said it.

Only a fact.

Marcus looked at the statements again.

He asked Katie whether she’d brought any of her payment records.

She had three receipts in her purse, including the last two installments and a payment summary she’d prepared that morning.

She unfolded the summary.

“I wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.”

There were thirty-four entries.

Some were small.

Two hundred dollars.

Three hundred and fifty.

Others were large enough to make me wonder how she’d managed them.

One entry showed $7,200 from the sale of her car.

Another showed a payment of $1,100 made during the previous December.

Katie saw Marcus looking at it.

“That was my Christmas bonus and some overtime.”

He looked away.

“Did you buy yourself anything?”

“A pair of boots.”

“Good.”

She gave a reluctant smile.

“They were on sale.”

He nodded, then returned to the numbers.

The completed payments totaled $35,160.

The final check was $6,840.

Exactly $42,000.

Marcus spread the printed account statements beside her notebook.

He began matching payment dates.

Not all of them appeared on the monthly records.

Some deposits were grouped together.

Others were labeled as internal transfers.

He checked each one carefully.

I helped by reading dates aloud while Katie compared them with her receipts.

Evelyn remained seated, watching.

At one point, Marcus stopped.

“There’s a seven-hundred-dollar payment missing.”

Katie found the receipt.

“October.”

Marcus searched the next month’s statement.

“There it is. Deposited November third.”

“Why was it delayed?”

Evelyn answered.

“The bank was processing an account change.”

Marcus made a note.

They continued.

It took nearly an hour.

By the end, I had three pages of figures in my handwriting.

Katie sat beside me, rubbing her tired eyes.

Marcus leaned back.

“All right.”

He looked from one record to another.

“There’s something important here.”

Katie straightened.

“What?”

“The payments you made weren’t deposited into my personal account.”

Evelyn stared at him.

Marcus continued.

“Every one of them was directed back into the education reserve.”

Katie looked bewildered.

“But Evelyn said I was reimbursing you.”

Marcus shook his head.

“You were putting money into the account I created for you.”

Katie looked at the $42,000 statement from three years earlier.

“Then why did I have to earn it all over again?”

Marcus was silent.

I studied the figures one more time.

The original withdrawal had emptied the account.

Katie’s payments had slowly restored it.

The $2,000 Marcus sent had also gone there, but later transactions showed that amount had been moved into a separate household holding account.

There was still $6,840 missing from the reserve.

Exactly the value of the check Evelyn had taken that evening.

Marcus stared at the account history.

Then he looked up at Evelyn.

“You took her college money, made her replace it herself, and kept me from finding out the account was empty. Is that what this was?”

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