He didn’t just steal from me.
He made an accomplice of my own better nature.
And I sat on that office floor understanding, finally and completely, that a man who can do that to you is not a man who slipped; he is a man who studied you, found the softest and best parts, and built his whole operation on top of them.
Chapter 21 — Ramona on the Porch
Ramona had the nerve to come to my father’s house two days later, in head-to-toe black, a rosary wound through her fingers, doing the grieving-mother act for an audience that no longer existed.
“A good wife,” she informed me from the porch steps, her voice pitched to carry, “stands by her husband when he is in trouble.
You are tearing this family to pieces.
Over a house that would have come to you anyway!
Have you no shame?”
I didn’t argue with her.
I walked out onto the porch and laid nine years of bank statements down on the little table between us, page after page, the transfers out and the transfers back, laid out in the plain unforgiving language of dates and amounts.
“Stand by him?” I said.
My voice came out level and cold and I was almost surprised by it.
“For nine years I sent you money for medicine you never took.