On the spur of the moment, she dialed Noah. He picked up and put her on speaker.
“What’s shaking, favorite sister of mine?”
“Nothing. What’re you up to?”
“Making a beet and feta frittata.”
“Love that one. I only have a few minutes, so I’ll cut to the chase. I need a favor.”
“Shoot.”
“I need a loan. Twenty thousand euros. I’d be forever in your debt.” And then without even a breath, Marlow tipped into a long, rambling blurt about her crumbling universe, including how she’d slept with LucandGuillaume. Noah tried to interrupt a few times, but she barreled on. Finally, when she was out of breath, he cut in.
“Marlie, Mum and Dad are here. I tried to tell you, but you kept cutting me off.”
No. What? NO!
“What have you gotten yourself into now?” asked her father.
“Dad, it’s OK—”
“Nothing about it is OK!” said Iris in a high-pitched voice.
“It is, Mum. I was just … being dramatic—for Noah’s sake. You know how we are.”
“A twenty-thousand-euro debtisdramatic,” said Iris.
“It’s not my fault,” said Marlow. “Rémy, thefonctionnaire—”
“The what?” Bill said.
“The local civil servant. I’m sorry you heard this conversation—it was meant to be private,” said Marlow. “Noah, I guess you can’t lend me the money.”
“Don’t put this on your brother,” said Iris.
“This is your problem to solve, and yours alone,” Bill said.
“I live in a one-bedroom apartment above a garage with my teenager,” said Marlow, knowing she was about to make this worse, but whatever. “You live in Rosedale and have memberships to two clubs. You drink wine with every meal. Expensive wine. Can you help?”
Silence. Marlow’s stomach was giving her trouble again. Gurgle, gurgle.
“This is how you have always behaved, Marlow,” said Bill. “Cavalier with the details. Getting into trouble and needing to be bailed out.”
“There have been so many times,” said Iris.
Marlow wondered which incident her mother was referring to. Breaking a crystal bowl and hiding the pieces until they were found a year later? Skipping school the day of her Grade 10 math exam, a class she was actually acing, and flunking the course as a result? Getting pregnant with a French filmmaker who never intended to be a father?
“You’ve always made terrible choices,” said Bill.
“If you don’t have the money, I understand,” she said, trying to be brave. “But—”
“Of course we have the money,” said Bill. “But you need to think logically, not emotionally. And so do we. We won’t throw good money after bad.”
“What good money have you thrown?” asked Marlow, voice tight.
“Stop this,” said Bill. “Abandon the house like the people before you who had the good sense to see there was nothing more to be gained. Walk away. Get Sabine, leave in the middle of the night if need be. Cancel your credit card—declare bankruptcy if you have to. Come back, dust yourself off, show up at work Monday, tell your boss you’ll put in the mileage like everyone else. Retire at sixty-five or seventy, and then you can think about spending your summers in France. If your pension will allow it. That is, if you even have a pension.”
She was left stunned, like the world had tilted, then turned completely upside down, and while her feet had previously been attached to the ground by gravitational force, she was now just falling with no one to catch her.
