Chapter 8 Mack #2
Hailey stopped by the steps down to the lake and squinted into the horizon, still silent.
She would let this tension build and build until he broke open like a goddamn water balloon at a Fourth of July picnic, Mack knew she would.
But he wasn’t some hysterical gold digger, he was an academic.
He would focus on the issue at hand, one crisis at a time, alligator nearest the boat, etc.
etc. etc. There were any number of metaphors that could save him now.
“We’ve just got to look at this the right way, is all,” Mack said to Hailey. “I got twenty-plus years of world-class care for Mom, for free. That was a good thing, but all good things come to an end.”
“This isn’t like summer camp or a honeymoon in the Bahamas, Mack. This is ten grand a month. How are we going to come up with ten thousand dollars a month? Do you have ten thousand dollars a month?”
He did not. His entire salary wouldn’t have covered Leonora’s nursing home, but he hadn’t had the heart to tell Irene Weigand that.
He was doing so well, Irene had said to him after they had drunk most of the morning away and Mack still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her about Sunshine Enterprises.
Mack was doing so well that Irene wondered, was it now possible for him to take over his mother’s care?
Only because she was pushing fifty—that time Mack didn’t even crack a smile—and she needed to think about having enough to cover the rest of her life, maybe have a little something to leave to charity.
As soon as he’d realized that she was serious about pulling her funds, Mack should have spilled his guts and told her he was losing his job and that it was his hotshot wife who paid for his fancy new house and he would soon have two kids in private school and there was no way, NO WAY, that he could afford to pay ten grand a month for his mother, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
It was partly the six beers he’d had by that point, and partly because he was focused on the realization that, if she was talking about cutting back on expenses, Irene couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Sunshine Enterprises.
She was giving him less money (none), not extra.
He watched as Hailey worked this out now: Mack’s father was dead, Irene Weigand was off the list even before Hailey had known she was on it, and so—
“Who the hell has been sending us these checks, then? You’ve deposited eighteen grand, and we don’t have any idea where it’s from.
” Even though it was ninety degrees, he saw Hailey shiver in the wind coming off the lake.
“Girls, come back this way! Let’s go see Tai and Etta and the boys!
” Hailey and Mack both took a sharp intake of breath as Gulliver passed within inches of Mabel’s scooter wheels.
Hailey snatched him up as the girls flew back past them and tucked him under her arm.
“I don’t know. I’ll do some investigating—”
Hailey actually snorted, and Mack found he resented her standing there in her designer sunglasses and crazy expensive cutoffs, her Cartier bracelet digging into poor Gulliver’s side, thinking she was so much better than him. But he didn’t take the bait.
“Look, we can cover my mom for a few months, and then I can move her up here, somewhere cheaper—”
“Cheaper? She needs around-the-clock medical care. Did you even try to talk to this Irene woman and find out why—”
“My mom is not her responsibility, Hailey. She’s my mom.” Mack was surprised at how strongly he meant this.
“I know that, and I totally get how you must feel. But this woman took on the responsibility when she set up the arrangement; otherwise you would’ve worked something else out.”
“Like what? Put my mother in some state-funded hellhole? Dropped out of school to try to take care of her myself? You and I would never have even met then.”
He had backed them into a dangerous corner and was relieved when she led them out, however roughly: “You don’t know that every state-funded care home is a hellhole.
So help me God, Mack Evans, you are going to be the one to take care of this.
This is not going to be another thing that I have to deal with.
And in case you are completely delusional, we do not have ten thousand dollars a month.
Not even close. This is not a great time for the firm. ”
In silence, they trailed the girls around the dusty Lakewood Park baseball diamond and past the picnic pavilion smoky with afternoon barbecues, then alongside the adventure playground and the teeming community pool.
They followed the familiar sidewalks until they reached their old house, and Mack felt a pang of longing for its shadowy porch, the kitchen with its uncomplicated, working appliances, and his office in the third bedroom where he looked out at clouds and treetops.
Hailey didn’t give the place so much as a sideways glance, and the girls had already sped past it and were banging on their former neighbor’s front door.
Mack could smell the grill and hear his friend’s voice coming from the backyard; salvation was near.
He swallowed his remark about hoping more couples would start hating each other in time for the last quarter of her financial year, and instead leaned in and pecked Hailey on the lips. “It’s gonna be okay.”
And he felt sure that it would be, at least until he was finally forced to tell her about his tutor group, and especially about Mackenzie Ewing. Then it might not be okay at all, though that would be entirely up to his wife and whether she believed his side of the story.