Chapter 6 - Yours Too
I woke up on Lena's couch to the smell of coffee and the sound of her kid's cartoons leaking through the bedroom door. My blouse was folded over the armrest. My burgundy skirt hung over a chair. My left hand still had both rings on it. My right hand still had that faint red mark across the back, duller now, yellow at the edge.
That morning, Lena set two mugs on her small kitchen table and slid a yellow legal pad toward me.
"You look like you need numbers," she said. "Not advice. Numbers."
She was right. Vanessa's voice had been looping in my head all night. Yours too. Two words tacked onto the end about my money. I needed to see what those two words would actually take.
I pulled my phone out and opened my banking app. Lena handed me a pen without a word.
First scene was just me writing. Paycheck, twice a month. Rent share. Car payment. Insurance. Groceries I covered. The electric bill I'd put on autopay two years ago because Daniel kept forgetting. I wrote it all in a straight column, my handwriting tight and small.
"Say it out loud," Lena said. "It helps."
I didn't want to. But I did. "I bring in forty-one hundred a month after taxes. Our joint expenses are about twenty-six hundred that I pay or split. The rest goes to savings. My savings."
Lena nodded. She didn't flinch. She poured more coffee.
The second thing I did was open my Venmo history. I scrolled back, thumb moving slow. There it was. Three hundred to Rosa in March. Birthday gift, Lena had written in the memo because Rosa had asked for cash for a church fundraiser. Four hundred in June. Help with the AC repair, Daniel had told me, and I'd sent it the same day. Two hundred fifty in September. Groceries for the family dinner I'd cooked most of.
Each one had a little heart emoji or a thank you. Each one had felt like family duty at the time. Seeing them stacked together made my stomach turn.
"I didn't mind giving," I said. "That's the part they don't get. I gave because I wanted to."
"I know," Lena said. "There's a difference between giving and handing over."
She got up and pulled a manila folder from the junk drawer. Old pay stubs from when we'd worked the same front desk job years ago. "Remember when we used to split gas to get to work?" she said, smiling a little. "You always tracked every dollar. You were good at this before they made you feel bad about it."
I laughed, short and tired. It felt good to be remembered as competent.
Then Daniel texted. Can we get coffee tomorrow? Just us. Please.
I stared at it. My thumb hovered. Part of me wanted to answer right away, to smooth it over. That was the old pattern. Please, don't make a scene. I'd heard that plea at the table while the rice sat untouched in front of me.
Lena watched me. "You don't have to answer this second."
"I want to talk to him alone," I said. "Not at that table. Not with them there."
I typed back: Yes. Tomorrow midday. Public place. Just us.
He replied in under a minute. Diner on 5th? Noon?
I wrote back: Yes.
I set the phone face-down. My hand was shaking a little, but my writing on the pad was steady when I turned back to it.
At the bottom of the page, under the columns, I wrote three lines and underlined them twice.
1. No new authorizations until Daniel and I talk.
2. My paycheck stays in my account.
3. Gifts are my choice, not management.
I stared at those lines. They weren't dramatic. They were just clear.
Lena read them over my shoulder. "That's a boundary," she said.
"It doesn't feel like enough," I said.
"It's a start," she said. "You froze it before it moved. That matters."
I tore off the little receipts I'd stuffed in my handbag weeks ago — grocery receipts for that lunch, for the prawns and tortillas and sodas — and paper-clipped them to the pad. Proof I'd already contributed. Proof I wasn't the selfish wife Vanessa had described while gesturing across that bright dining room.
I folded the pad in half and slipped it into my cream handbag beside my wallet, the gold clasp clicking shut.
May you like
I hadn't transferred a cent. I hadn't called Rosa. I hadn't done anything except write the truth down where I could see it.
Tomorrow, I'd say it out loud to Daniel alone.
