It hasn’t been that kind of century for a while now.”
Chapter 11 — The Blue Notebook
Shane found it dead center on the bare dining table: a navy notebook with a sticky note on the cover. Since you insist on treating me like a stranger in your home, I’ll settle our accounts like one.
He opened it and read, and the reading took the color out of his face.
Down payment shortfall on the condo: $15,000.
Source: Lorna’s premarital savings. He turned the page. Master bath renovation balance: $2,500.
Shane’s bonus was late; paid on Lorna’s card. Another page. Live-in care for Marlene after surgery: $850, plus nine days of Lorna’s unpaid leave to bathe and feed her, because Marlene refused a stranger. On and on it went — the electrical panel, the water bills, the christening gift for Tiffany’s boy, the new washer because Marlene didn’t like the old one’s noise, Shane’s own secret credit-card debt from the fishing trips, the roof repair on Marlene’s cabin.
No single figure was catastrophic.
Bound together in that little blue book, they made a slow, patient noose.
Tiffany, reading over his shoulder, found her own name — prenatal vitamins, gas money, an unpaid five-hundred-dollar loan — and tried to slam the cover shut.