Chapter 3 Walking Away #2
"When did you two open the joint account?" Amanda asks.
"About four years ago. We were talking about saving for a house together. Kirk said it would be easier to keep everything in one place so we could track how much we were putting away each month."
"And you've been contributing every month?"
"Every month. Five hundred dollars."
"And Kirk?"
I pause. "He was supposed to match it. I don't know if he did. I stopped checking the statements about a year in because I trusted him."
Amanda doesn't say anything for a moment. She just looks at me. Then she sets her wine down and pulls out her phone. "I'm texting you Fiona's number right now. Call her Monday morning. First thing."
"Okay."
"Brook. I mean it. First thing."
"I said okay."
She leans back in the chair. "I know you did. I just want to make sure you actually do it and don't talk yourself out of it because you feel guilty about protecting yourself. You have nothing to feel guilty about. He did this. Not you."
She's right. I know she's right. But there's still a part of me that feels strange about calling a lawyer. It feels aggressive. Final. It feels like I'm admitting that the person I spent nine years with is someone I now need legal protection from.
But that's exactly what he is.
After Amanda leaves I sit in the quiet house for a while.
I look through my email for any financial statements I can find.
I locate the login information for the joint savings account and pull it up on my laptop.
The balance is lower than I expected. Much lower.
I've been putting in five hundred dollars a month for four years.
That's twenty-four thousand dollars from my side alone.
The current balance is just over six thousand.
I close the laptop. I'll deal with that on Monday.
Then I drive to my mother's house.
Miranda Walker lives on Ridgeland Avenue in the house where I grew up.
It's a modest three-bedroom with a garden in the back and a porch swing in the front that my father hung before he passed away eleven years ago.
My mother has lived here alone since then.
She keeps the house clean and the yard tidy and she fills the rooms with fresh flowers from her garden whenever they're in season.
She's in the kitchen when I arrive. She's making soup. The house smells warm and familiar and something about that nearly breaks me.
"Brook. What a nice surprise." She turns from the stove and sees my face. Her expression changes immediately. "What happened?"
"Can I sit down?"
"Of course. Sit."
We sit at the kitchen table. The same table where I did homework as a kid and had birthday dinners and learned how to play cards with my father. My mother folds her hands in front of her and waits.
I tell her. All of it. Just the facts. I've told this story twice now and each time it gets a little easier to say out loud. Not because it hurts less but because the words have started to feel ordinary. Kirk got someone pregnant. He's been lying to me. I found out. It's over.
My mother listens the same way Amanda did. Without interrupting. Without reacting. When I finish she reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."
"Did you know? Did you ever suspect anything?"
She's quiet for a moment. "I didn't know about this.
But I've worried for a long time that you were giving more than you were getting.
I never said anything because you seemed happy and I wanted to respect your choices.
But I noticed. The way he canceled plans.
The way he always seemed to have somewhere else to be. I noticed."
Her honesty doesn't hurt. It actually helps. It tells me that what I saw last night wasn't some sudden revelation. The signs were there all along. I just chose not to see them.
"You can stay here as long as you want," she says. "Your room is exactly the way you left it."
"Thank you, Mom. But I think I'm going to stay at my house. I need to be in my own space right now."
She nods. She doesn't push. That's one of the things I love most about my mother. She offers what she can and then she steps back and lets me decide. She trusts me to know what I need even when I'm not sure I trust myself.
We eat soup together. She tells me about her garden and about the new book she's reading and about the neighbor's cat that keeps sitting on her porch swing. Normal things. Small things. The kind of conversation that doesn't require anything from me except my presence. I'm grateful for it.
Before I leave she walks me to the door and hugs me.
"You're going to be okay," she says. "You are smart and strong and you have always been capable of more than you give yourself credit for. This is going to hurt for a while. But you're going to be okay."
I drive home as the sun is going down. The streets are quiet. The neighborhoods are settling into their Saturday evening routines. Families having dinner. Couples walking dogs. Normal life happening all around me while I try to figure out what my new normal looks like.
At home I pour a glass of water and sit on the back patio.
The plastic chair wobbles. The garden bed needs mulch.
The air is warm and still. I pull out my phone and look at it for the first time in hours.
There are fourteen missed calls from Kirk.
Eight text messages. I scroll through them without reading them closely.
Brook where are you?
Why aren't you answering?
I came by your house. Your car isn't here.
Please call me.
I need to talk to you.
Are you okay? I'm worried.
Brook please.
I'm sorry. Please just call me back.
The last one was sent twenty minutes ago. He's sorry. He doesn't even know what I heard yet and he's already sorry. Maybe he's figured it out. Maybe he went home and found his apartment emptied of every trace of me and the key sitting on the counter. Maybe now he knows.
Or maybe he's just sorry I'm not answering his calls. Maybe the apology is about convenience and not about guilt. With Kirk it's hard to tell the difference anymore.
I delete every message without responding.
Then I put the phone face down on the arm of the patio chair and sit there in the fading daylight.
Tomorrow I'll call Fiona Grant. I'll start separating my finances from Kirk's.
I'll begin the long slow process of taking my life back from someone who never deserved it.
But tonight I just sit here. In my yard. In my house. In the quiet.
I think about what Amanda said. That I shouldn't feel guilty about protecting myself.
She's right. I've spent nine years putting Kirk's comfort ahead of my own.
I turned down the promotion because he said it would be hard on us.
I stopped traveling with Amanda because he felt left out.
I put money into an account that he apparently drained without telling me.
I gave and gave and gave and he took everything I offered and asked for more and I never once said no.
That stops now.
I don't know exactly what the next few weeks are going to look like.
I don't know what Fiona Grant is going to tell me or how complicated the financial separation will be or whether Kirk is going to make this easy or hard.
What I do know is that I'm done waiting for him to be the person I needed him to be.
He had nine years. That's more than enough time.
The last bit of daylight disappears behind the houses across the street. The porch lights come on up and down the block. I pick up my glass of water and go inside.
Tomorrow I'll call the lawyer. Tomorrow I'll start the work of untangling my life from Kirk's. Tomorrow everything changes again.
But tonight is mine. Just mine.
And I let the day end.