Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
AMELIE
With Stefan at work and the kids in school, I sat at the kitchen table, replaying the conversation with Kai in my mind.
The single bulb over the sink was still on, the overhead light a casualty of a blown fuse we never got around to fixing.
In the weak glow, I ran the numbers on my laptop again, even though I’d already run them four times.
Even if I picked up every extra shift this month and Stefan worked a second job, we couldn’t catch up with our bills.
We were in too big a hole, especially with our most recent notice for back taxes owed to the IRS.
Perhaps I could borrow the money that would help us get back on our feet. Enough to cover the back mortgage payments. Enough to pay off our credit card bills. Enough to breathe for a few weeks while Stefan pulled himself together, and Kai lost interest in me.
There was a name I hadn’t dialed in weeks.
Maybe longer. Not because I didn’t love her—I loved her a whole fucking lot—but because phone calls with Rose had started to feel like charity.
Not in anything she ever said. Rose wasn’t like that.
It was in what I never said, in the excuses I made for why we couldn’t visit her in New York.
We just couldn’t afford it. She got married a few months ago, and her new husband flew my entire family to New York just so Rose could have her best friend by her side.
He’d offered to fly us to New York again for the summer, which made me feel like a charity case.
I couldn’t even return the favor by inviting Rose to our home in California.
We had no idea how her immensely wealthy husband would react to our residence with broken lights, and we didn’t want him to think poorly of Rose’s friends.
Rose knew. Of course she knew. I still missed her so badly.
I picked up my phone.
She answered on the second ring, her voice carrying the warmth of someone genuinely happy to hear from me. “Amelie! Hi.”
The knot in my chest eased at the sound of her voice. “Hi.”
“It’s been so long.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Things have been—” I pressed my back against the chair. “Hectic.”
“No worries at all. I understand.” She always did. Even if I hadn’t been busy, Rose would have understood. “How’s Stefan?”
“Stefan’s great.” I closed my eyes because it couldn’t be further from the truth. How could I tell her that I was considering marrying another man because Stefan was depressed with his burdened life? I didn’t even have the means to get him help for his suicidal thoughts.
“How are his brothers and sister?”
“The twins turned eight a few days ago.”
“Oh, wow. Did you do anything special?”
“Just dinner.” Dinner that changed our lives. “How’s Dr. Maxwell?”
Rose laughed. “Amelie.” The fond exasperation was immediate. “Are you ever going to call my husband by his first name?”
I laughed, too. “Sorry. Old habits.”
Although I had promised to make a considerable effort to break the pattern, Rose’s husband, Caden Maxwell, would always be Dr. Maxwell to me.
He was a professor at our university before he married Rose.
Later, he became my employer when he offered me a nurse’s position on his luxury yacht.
Coincidentally, that was how I met Kai. They all knew each other, rich people.
For a moment, I wondered whether he’d tell Dr. Maxwell about his sleazy proposal.
I’d die of embarrassment, but found consolation in the fact that Kai appeared to be a private person.
For a few minutes, everything was fine, and I was just calling my best friend to catch up. Those seconds were enough to remind me what normal felt like. I held on to them for as long as I could.
I started talking about anything and everything.
I told her about my shifts, about a patient who had brought me homemade cookies, about something funny Bella said at dinner last Tuesday.
I talked too fast and about too little. She let me.
That was the thing about Rose. She let you run until you ran out of road.
I was running out of road.
Eventually, she asked gently, “How are things, really?” The question carried more weight than the first one. Rose could read subtext over a phone line.
My eyes welled up. Because, of course, she sensed desperation in my voice, even though I aimed to sound cool and collected.
“We are managing,” I said carefully, skirting around the issue.
Silence.
Her voice shifted, casual in the deliberate way that wasn’t casual at all. “I’ve actually been meaning to call you. I’m so rude. I realized that I never sent you a wedding gift.”
That was a lie. Her husband had given us a sizeable check when we got married. It was the only reason we were able to cover the funeral costs for Stefan’s parents. She was lying to give me a semblance of dignity.
“You don’t have to do that,” I murmured. Oh God. I had called my best friend for a handout, and she knew it, too.
“Of course, I do. What’s a good amount for you to start off married life on the right note?” she asked delicately, even though we had been married for a while now. A pause, light and practiced, when I didn’t speak. “It’s a wedding gift, Amelie. You have to take it.”
Wedding gift.
Rose knew I had no means of paying her back anytime soon. She also didn’t want the weight of a repayment schedule sitting between us every time we talked. But a wedding gift? She had wrapped it beautifully. Rose was always good at that.
My throat tightened. My eyes burned. I pressed my free hand flat against the table.
This is it, I thought. All I have to do is tell her the amount.
Say yes, and I could walk away from all of it. From Kai Cavendish and his obscene offer, and the look on Stefan’s face when he said, “I can’t do it anymore.”
I opened my mouth.
From somewhere behind Rose’s voice—muffled but unmistakable—came Dr. Maxwell’s.
“Rose.” Low and precise, the voice of a man accustomed to being heard the first time. “We can’t give them any more money.”
Everything in me went cold.
Them. Not her. Not Amelie. Them.
He said it the way you say stray cats. The way you talked about a problem that kept showing up on your doorstep, inconvenient and expected. Any more. As in, this was a pattern he had grown tired of.
Rose was quick to admonish him. “Caden,” she hissed. “Shh.”
“I mean it, Rose,” he told her. “Tell her no.”
“Could you hang on one second, Amelie?” she said into the receiver.
Rose said nothing for one second. Two. Three. The silence was deafening.
Then I heard movement, the soft static of a hand covering the receiver, her voice tight and hushed as she said a few words I couldn’t quite make out. But it was the mortified scramble of damage control by an embarrassed wife.
I couldn’t blame Dr. Maxwell for what he said.
After my family went bankrupt, Rose would sneak money into my wallet when she thought I wasn’t looking.
She had carried me during college without complaint.
Of course, Dr. Maxwell was tired of his wife helping her broke friend.
Oh God. I had even considered asking him for a contact in California, someone who could find Stefan a better job.
But I nixed the idea. Clearly, he was over it and didn’t want us calling them for any more favors.
Just because they had money and influence didn’t mean they were under any obligation to bail us out.
I couldn’t believe he saw me as someone who used Rose for her money.
Ashamed didn’t begin to cover it. Dr. Maxwell was the kind of man you aspired to become.
The kind who made you want to be worthy of his investment.
He had once told me I had potential, a compliment from a man of his caliber, a renowned professor and scientist. And now, he thought of me as a debt that wouldn’t clear.
I had never felt so humiliated, not even when Kai had propositioned us. I had caused discord in their marriage because I didn’t know how to save mine. All I wanted to do was hang up and pretend this call never happened.
Rose came back on the line. “Sorry, I just had to… take care of something.” Her voice was too bright. “Anyway, as I was saying—”
“No, it’s okay.” I heard myself say it clearly and pleasantly, with the ease of someone who had not just been gutted.
“I shouldn’t have scared you with the whole we-are-managing thing.
What I meant by that is marriage is hard.
” Not a complete lie. “I’m sorry it came across as if I needed a loan.
We are actually doing pretty well, financially.
But if you have any marriage advice to share, please loan me some of that.
” I laughed, and it landed almost right.
“Oh.” A pause. After rooming together throughout college, I knew Rose like the back of my hand.
She was now embarrassed that she’d been presumptuous and offered me money in the first place.
The last thing she’d ever do was hurt my pride.
It was exactly what I needed to say to make her move on.
“It’s great to hear that you guys are doing so well financially.
Of course. I’m always here to give you advice. ”
“You’re the best.” I proceeded to tell her a complete fabrication about how Stefan left his shoes out every damn time and complained about him not doing the dishes.
Soon, she forgot about the money and went to great lengths with her marriage advice.
Something about patience and helping Stefan break his bad habits.
After our conversation, I told her awkwardly, “Listen, it’s getting late and I should probably—”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll call you next week, okay? Maybe we can finally figure out a visit. I’d love to see you.”
I nodded to no one. “I’d love that, too,” I said weakly.
“Take care of yourself.”
I hung up and set the phone face down on the table.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then a dam broke open in my chest without warning, and I pressed both hands flat against the table, trying to hold still.
My shoulders shook first. Then my whole body.
Hot tears spilled down my face and dropped onto the table before I could think to wipe them away, and the sound that came out of me wasn’t dignified.
It was ugly and guttural, the kind of crying that leaves no room for performance because there’s no one to perform for.
We can’t give them any more money.
Even my best friend’s husband thought poorly of us. And I had started a fight in her marriage while looking for a handout. How had it come to this?
I pressed my fist against my mouth to keep the sound in, but it came out anyway, this thin, wretched, terrible thing, and I sat there in the kitchen, in the dark, with no one listening, and let it.
There was no door. No other choices. I had to marry Kai Cavendish or lose the man I loved.