Chapter 9
The diner on Route 12 still had the same cracked vinyl booths and the smell of old coffee burned into the walls. I slid in across from Roman and he didn't take off his jacket, even though the heat was blasting. His hands stayed flat on the table. The tattoos on his knuckles looked faded under the fluorescent light.
He ordered black coffee. I ordered tea I knew I wouldn't drink. Sophie was at school for another hour. Helena had texted twice already asking where I was. I hadn't answered.
"I wasn't gone," he said after the waitress walked away. "Not the way she told you."
I waited. My hands were around the mug just to have something to hold.
He told me North Dakota. After the plea deal three years ago, the judge gave him a choice. Eighteen months inside, then a work-release pipeline assignment if he kept clean and kept paying support. No contact violations, no travel back without court approval. He took it. He said the camp had no cell service for weeks at a stretch and the only address he had for us was Helena's. He'd been sending the checks to her foundation account because Helena told him it was more stable, that I didn't want his name on anything direct.
"I thought you knew," he said. "Every month the bank confirmed the transfer. Fifty thousand. I thought you were getting it."
I stared at him. The words felt too big for that small table.
"Helena told me you were in Minnesota," I said. "Then she told me you were dead. She showed me an obituary on her phone. It had your name. I didn't know how to check if it was real."
His jaw tightened. He didn't interrupt me.
"She said the money stopped because your accounts were closed after you died. I believed her because we had nothing. Sophie's cardigan has a hole in the elbow I've sewn three times. I thought if you were alive you would have come back."
Roman looked down at his coffee. When he spoke again his voice was lower.
"She told me you didn't want me near Sophie. That you had a new boyfriend and you told her to tell me to stay away. She said if I showed up I'd scare you and I'd violate the order. She said the best thing I could do was keep sending money and stay gone."
The mirrored lie landed so clean I felt sick. She had told him I left him. She had told me he left us. Both of us had listened because we were tired and she was standing there with the right clothes and the right voice saying she would handle it.
"Why did you trust her?" I asked.
He didn't make an excuse. That was the first time I believed him completely.
"Because she was your mother," he said. "And because I wasn't someone you should have trusted either. I had a record before Sophie was born. I had debt from before we met. I figured if I fought her, you'd lose the little help she was giving you. I thought distance was the price."
The bell over the diner door chimed and I flinched. It was just a truck driver coming in.
We left cash on the table and drove to the county records office. We didn't go inside. We sat in the parking lot with the engine running because it was thirty-eight degrees and the wind cut straight through my jacket. Roman had a folder on his lap. Transfers, all of them, printed from his bank. Every month, same amount, same account number ending in 4401. Helena's foundation account.
I showed him what I'd found on my phone. The foundation's public filing from last year. Gala expenses. Catering. Lighting. Chandelier rental alone was twenty thousand dollars. And a line item labeled educational support that was only six thousand for the entire year.
"It's all prestige spending," I said. "Nothing for Sophie."
He nodded. He'd already seen it.
"She needed it to look like she was the one keeping everything together," he said. "If you knew the money was from me, you wouldn't need her. If I knew you still wanted me around, I wouldn't stay away."
We sat there a long time watching people go in and out of the low brick building. A woman carried a stack of files. A sheriff's cruiser pulled out slow.
Helena called again. I let it ring. Roman watched my face.
"We need the real bank statements," I said. "Not just your side. Hers. The ones that show where it went after it landed."
"I requested them," he said. "They're pending. Three to five business days."
I thought about Sophie's pigtails that morning, how she'd asked if her dad was going to pick her up again.
"We were both played," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "But she still cashed every check."
We agreed then, without shaking hands or making a speech about it. We would trace every dollar together. We would not tell Sophie anything until we had paper she could actually see. And we would not let Helena be the only person who got to decide what was true anymore.
May you like
When I started the car, Roman's phone buzzed. A name I didn't recognize. He didn't answer it either.
Helena was waiting when I got home. She stood in my driveway in her wool coat, arms crossed, like she owned the house I paid rent on. I rolled down the window. She asked where I'd been. I told her I was getting the records for Sophie's school. She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes, and for the first time I saw how carefully she watched me to see if I was still believing her.
