The Note She Never Told Him About

What Was Sitting in My Filing Cabinet

The morning after the nursery, before Krista or Darren were even awake, I drove into town and sat down with my attorney, a woman named Charlene who has handled my affairs since Roland died, and I brought the whole folder with me, all twenty four months of payment records going back to the closing.

Charlene confirmed what I had already begun to suspect while I lay awake the night before running the numbers in my head. Darren had not simply been late once or twice the way anyone might be. He had missed the note payment outright in June, made a partial payment in July that did not cover the shortfall, and had not paid anything at all in August or September. Four months, more than five thousand dollars behind, on a note that, per its own terms, allowed the holder, meaning me, to demand the full remaining balance immediately upon a default that ran past ninety days without cure.

I had not been checking my bank statements as closely as I should have that summer, wrapped up as I was in Krista’s pregnancy and then the baby, and Darren, it turned out, had been counting on exactly that. He had never once mentioned falling behind. He had let a mother-in-law he considered a harmless, doddering retired teacher simply not notice, right up until the morning he stood in a nursery and told me I could not afford to start something with him.

Charlene looked over the whole file and then looked at me over her glasses. “You could call this due today if you wanted to, Cathy. You have every right. But I want to ask you something first, because I’ve known you a long time. Is this about the money, or is this about your daughter?”

It was a fair question, and I sat with it for longer than I expected to. “It was never about the money,” I told her. “It’s about making sure he understands, once and completely, that the ground he’s standing on was never as solid as he thought it was.”