15. Delilah
DELILAH
I called the bank and requested ten years of my joint account statements on paper. After a lot of hemming and hawing, they finally agreed to have them shipped over.
The courier they sent was all-caps pissed at how many trips he had to make back and forth from his van to get all the boxes on my shelf. I gave him a free cookie for his trouble, but I still don’t think we’re gonna be besties anytime soon.
He can’t get mad at me, though. It’s not my fault. This is what my lawyer is telling me to do.
Skye told me what she needed, which pretty much boiled down to “everything that’s ever been recorded, ever.” Bank records, credit card statements, invoices, receipts from the Sonic drive-thru—if it had a date and a dollar amount on it, she wants it, no matter how old it is.
When I asked her why she thought my dry-cleaning stub from 2017 was important, she asked me if I cared enough to pay her for the time it would take to explain it.
I said no thanks. We’re on thin ice as it is, financially speaking.
But collecting and organizing all the receipts from a decade of my life is a time-consuming task.
So that’s what I’m doing between services on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The bakery is open. It has to be. New Year’s is coming and people want their cakes and their cookie trays, and Priya and Angelica and Cameron and Jolene are all back from the holiday.
To my irritation, they’re all walking on eggshells around me. God forbid any one of them slip up and say the words “slideshow” or “Connor.” I’m mostly getting a lot of heartfelt sighs and pats on the shoulder.
I do my best to stay busy. I work the front until the morning rush thins out. Then I go into the office, shut the door, and sit down to sort through the boxes.
It immediately makes me want to jump off a bridge.
Nobody tells you that the aftermath of your life exploding is so clerical.
I’ve got the statements in one pile, a legal pad on my left, a highlighter in my right hand, and a Big Gulp full of pure espresso within reach.
The way Skye explained it, my job is to go line by line and pull out anything that doesn’t belong.
Hotels I didn’t stay at, restaurants I’ve never been to, flowers I never got, jewelry I never wore, airline tickets for trips I didn’t take.
An hour in, I want to cry.
I thought going through the wreckage of my marriage would feel like something. Big and cinematic, like the slideshow felt.
Instead, it’s cramming for the final exam of a class I mostly slept through all semester. I’m cramping up in my neck and writing hand using all these muscles that haven’t gotten a workout since twelfth grade.
My eyes feel like pool balls in their sockets. I’m two seconds away from popping them out with a spoon so I can bathe them in doughnut frosting until they aren’t so dry and aching.
Meanwhile, the list goes on.
DUANE READE.
STOP it was Kane, and he’s got plans on plans on plans. Where I fit into those plans remains to be seen.
It’s beyond obvious that those plans are neither nice, nor legal, nor peaceful. He’s a violent man who operates in a world of cash drops and shadowy threats.
How do I square that with the daunting stranger who wiped sugar from my cheek and seemed, for one wild second, like he wanted to kiss me?
He said he’d be back soon, but six days have gone by and there’s been no sign of him.
I’ve thought about him more in those six days than I care to admit. Not in a way I’m proud of. He walked into the worst night of my life, told me I was wrong about my own body, and then vanished into the snow like something I made up at four in the morning after too many hours awake.
He’s a phantom.
He’s a menace.
He’s a very bad idea.
But he’s also the last resort I don’t want to use.
In the end, we all knew this was coming.
I pick up.
I dial.
I wait.
Brrrr.
Brrrr.
Brr—
“Yeah.”
I blink, startled. I had many visions of how this conversation would go, but none of them began with the non-Kane stranger on the other end answering like I’ve already wasted his precious time.
“Uh… Er, sorry. Hi.”
“Yeah.”
Whoever this man is, customer service is not his strong suit.
I sit up straight as if he can see my slouched posture. “I’m, uh…” How do I phrase this? “I’m calling about a loan through V Haven Holdings.”
“Yeah,” he grunts for the third time.
“I’m— My name is Delilah. I’m the guarantor on a note. Account of Connor Boyd.” I look down at the calendar and the ocean of black X’s. “I’d like to speak to Kane Makov.”
He doesn’t say anything for long enough that I check the display to see if the call dropped.
Then he says, “Say that name again.” He’s paying attention now in a way he wasn’t ten seconds ago.
“Kane Makov,” I say. “Tell him it’s— Tell him it’s Lilah. He knows who I am.”
“Hold on.”
He drops the phone on something hard. I hear echoes from the room he’s in. A door, somebody talking, a barking dog, a chair scraping.
I sit there with the receiver against my ear and my heart going hard. I look around my office while I wait. The cot with the blanket folded on the end of it, the health department certificate in the frame with the crack in the corner, the tape dispenser.
The X’s. All those fucking X’s.
Then:
“Ms. Dorsey.” It’s the same man who answered, but he’s become far more friendly since he walked away. Deferential, almost.
“Yes.”
“You at the bakery?”
I don’t remember telling him my last name. I definitely never told him I have a bakery.
“Yes,” I say.
“Alright. Stay there.” He clears his throat. “The boss is coming to see you in person.”