Chapter 2
Two
It’s a miracle I don’t vomit.
Not as I close the store four hours early for the day.
Not as I drop Bennie off at Jonathan’s dental practice without warning.
Not as I march into the bank with my mother, who has just finished telling me for the third time what happened to all of the money.
All. Of. The. Money.
Our money.
“Ms. Conway.” Barry, the big-bellied banker, drops into his chair and makes it squeak. He turns to my mother. “And Ms. Conway.”
He chuckles at his idiotic repetition of our names, and Mom smiles. How her muscles have the gumption to make such a shape in a time like this is a fucked-up miracle.
“Barry,” she says sweetly. “Good to see you again.”
In a small town like Fontain, the bank staff is slim. Any time we make a deposit for the store, Barry’s here.
He steeples his fingers on his desk and leans forward. “How can I help you lovely ladies?”
I give my mom a pointed look. “Tell him.”
“Well, it’s a funny story—” Mom pauses when Barry’s face scrunches up to the point his eyes squint and his teeth are showing, mouth slightly agape. He blinks so rapidly it’s a wonder he can see. He looks like a rat.
I look at Mom and roll my eyes—this is Barry’s listening face. No matter how many times I witness it, it’s never any less bizarre.
“Right,” she says. “Well, like I told Rue. I signed up for a dating site—Golden Love—and met a French financial advisor. He collects Limoges enamels.” She pauses like Barry should be impressed by this; I would bet every dollar in this bank he has no idea what a Limoges enamel even is.
“Anyway, we’ve been talking for months. His name is .
. .” She squints at the ceiling, stalling.
For the love of God.
“Andre, Mom,” I fill in to hurry her along.
“I know his name,” she snaps at me. Sweetly, to Barry: “Andre. He’s so . . .” She sighs like she’s swept up in a romance novel. “Handsome. And smart. Sexy.” I pin her with a look that turns her smile into a huff. “Rue, will you relax?”
I almost laugh.
At the nerve.
Of this.
Woman.
She always errs on the side of unpredictable, but she’s never done anything like this. Spend money on ridiculous items? Absolutely. But audaciousness at this magnitude? Never once. It’s like someone else was controlling her brain.
“Anyway,” she continues, “he works with small businesses—like ours—to maximize their financial standings—which Rue refuses to listen to.” She and I exchange an icy look.
“He explained how the market is so much better in France and if I let him invest our money there, we’d make a 400% return in no time—months, even. ”
This being the fourth time I’m hearing this story, I’m no less shocked or irate than the first. This French bastard probably isn’t even named Andre. Or French.
Barry blinks, full speed ahead.
“And he said he’d take care of everything. All I had to do was give him the account info.”
I’m on the brink of crawling out of my own skin when Mom’s eyes meet mine. For the first time since I found our empty bank account, there’s a flicker of concern. Like I’m watching her realize just how deep the shit we’re standing in is.
“That was two weeks ago. And—” She fishes a piece of paper out of her purse.
“This is his number. We haven’t talked since he transferred the money because he’s on a business trip.
He’ll call when he gets home.” She looks at me.
“He will call, Rue. Just because Nash—” My eyes dare her to finish that thought.
She chooses wisely and does not, looking back to Barry.
“We’ve been planning his visit. I told him about the French-inspired wines of the region—there’s a great chardonnay aged in French barrels I know he’ll love.
He wouldn’t just not call. It doesn’t make sense.
” Back to me: “It doesn’t make sense, Rue.
You see how ridiculous that sounds, right? ”
On the armrests of our chairs, I take her hand in mine and give it a squeeze. I can’t lie to her, so I say nothing. He’s gone. I know it in my gut. Andre is long gone with all our money. She’ll never talk to him again.
We both look at Barry who blinks at least a dozen more times before unscrunching his face and clearing his throat. “I see.”
“Now what?” I ask, pushing my bangs off to the side.
He blows out a long breath that sounds like a dragged out heeeeeeee. “Not good.”
I straighten. “How not good?”
He bares his teeth and rapid fires a few hundred blinks before repeating, “Not good.”
“We can just call him,” Mom offers, already pulling out her cellphone and dialing the number. “Get this straightened out. He’ll explain everything. Rue’s just overreacting like she always does. Worrying for no—”
The recording for the disconnected number fills the room and crashes her expression.
Barry blinks.
“Now what?” I repeat. “How can we get our money back?”
He clears his throat. “We’ll do an investigation—and you’ll need to file a police report—but . . .”
“But what?” I demand.
“But cases like this rarely end favorably.” He gives a pained smile. “He was given the account number. His phone is deactivated. My guess is the data from his dating profile will lead us nowhere—probably an IP address in India.”
“So we just-just-just what?” I release my mom’s hand, make two fists, and slam them on the desk. I don’t have a short temper, but this is insanity; I can’t stay quiet. “Have no goddamn money? It’s just-just gone?”
“Rue,” Mom says in a hushed voice. “Calm down.”
“Calm down?” I laugh maniacally at the ludicrous suggestion.
I have a little money in a retirement account, a few thousand dollars in my personal savings, and far less than that in my checking account.
I’ll never be able to maintain the lifestyle Bennie’s used to.
Her tuition. The new roof we just had put on the store.
The business has already been struggling—we might lose it. Our house.
“All of our money is gone, Mom. Gone. The money that pays us. That pays for Bennie’s school. That will pay for her college.” Tears well up in my eyes that I blink dry. I will not cry over this. Not now. “Did you give him your money too?”
She says nothing; she did. The business money and her personal accounts are empty. Her savings. I can’t even bring myself to ask how much. Dad saved nearly half of every cent he earned, and she handed it over to an internet boyfriend.
Barry blinks, and I have half a mind to rip the eyelids off his face and eat them like a crazed cannibal.
He slides a form across the desk, requesting our contact information and everything Mom can recall about Andre. I fill it out—front and back—but every letter I write drains a little more hope out of me.
“We’ll be in touch,” Barry says when we’re finished, swiping the paper from the desk before waddling out of his office.
It’s the same thing the police officer says when I finish filing the police report.
In the parking lot in my station wagon, the adrenaline fades. Fast. I’m exhausted. And angry. So angry. I’ve given my life to this business in hopes of giving us all solid ground to stand on, yet here we are. Broke and on ground so shaky we might as well be living on a fault line.
Through the windshield, the sky is a perfect shade of blue and in no way matches how horrible this is. It should be filled with locusts or spitting hail or splitting wide open.
“I’ve seen you do a lot of things, but this, Mom?” My voice sounds as defeated as my whole body feels. “This takes the cake.”
“I think I believed him,” she says.
“You think?” I roll my head against the headrest to face her. “What the hell kind of excuse is that?” In no universe can someone so smart be so stupid.
She picks mindlessly at her fingernails then spins a turquoise ring around her middle finger. “It felt like an answer, I was sure of it . . .” Her voice trails off and it’s almost like she’s as confused by her actions as I am. It’s infuriating.
“Well it sure as shit wasn’t an answer,” I shoot back. “This—” I blow out a breath. “Is a disaster.”
Before she can respond, my phone dings with a calendar reminder. MOM DOC APPT @4:30.
“I’ll take you to your appointment.” I pass her my phone. “Can you call and check on Bennie?” I ask, turning the key and shifting into drive. “Ask him to take her to his house and I’ll come by and get her after?”
“Him . . .” she repeats.
“Funny.” I cut my eyes to her as I turn out of the police department parking lot. “Forgetting my fiancé in an effort to soften the blow of the money won’t work.”
She scrolls through the contacts, going right past Jonathan’s name.
Maybe it’s the exhaustion—the weight of what just happened and the road straight up a mountainside we have ahead of us—but something is off.
“Mom.” I raise my eyebrows in her silence. “Jonathan?”
“I know who Jonathan is.” She scowls and dials his number. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
Jonathan answers and she says all the right things and gives all the right information, looking at me the whole time like I’m being overbearing. Like I’m the one giving away bank account numbers like I wasn’t married to a man who preached guarding personal information like your life depended on it.
Alarm bells ring but I can’t pinpoint their origin. Like smelling smoke but not seeing the fire. Something is wrong—more wrong than Andre taking off with our money.
Then a thought hits me that I can’t shake as I replay the conversations of our day . . . the last weeks. The names. The purchases I can’t wrap my brain around.
It’s a miracle I don’t vomit.
Not the blurry three miles it takes to get to her appointment.
Not as Mom tries to stop me from going in with her to talk to the doctor.
Not as the doctor shares the secret Mom’s been keeping, making life as I know it completely implode.