Page 31 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

NINE

LENNON

The hotel clerkruns my card a second time.

I know she already ran it once. I watched her do it. But she’s being professional about this, giving me the dignity of a second attempt, and I am choosing to believe in the second attempt with everything I have because the alternative is?—

The machine beeps.

She turns the little screen toward me so I can see the word myself, which I appreciate less than she probably intends.

Declined.

“I have another one,” I say.

I have three other ones. I go through all of them with the focused calm of someone defusing a bomb, and the clerk runs each one twice without being asked because she is, genuinely, a kind person. Each time the machine makes its small verdict sound I hand her the next card and do not think about the fact that Jake set up every single one of these accounts and I don’t know what my own recovery questions are. Nor do I think about waking up this morning on a stranger’s chest feeling, for the firsttime in recent memory, like everything might actually be okay. No, not a stranger. Jake’sbrother’schest.

Stop thinking about it.

“Ma’am.” The clerk’s voice has changed register. She’s not being unkind but she’s being clear, the way people get when they’ve decided the kindness portion of a situation has concluded. “I’m going to have to ask?—”

“One second.” I’m already on my phone, logging into the bank app, because there’s money in these accounts, I know there’s money, Jake has a good job and I have my business income and we’ve been saving for years, so this is clearly some kind of?—

Fraudulent Activity Detected.

The screen refreshes. Same message.

I try the next account.

Fraudulent Activity Detected.

The next one.

I look up. The security guard has materialized at the edge of my peripheral vision with the practiced casualness of someone who does this regularly and has learned that making it obvious too early only makes things worse.

Oh my god.

They think I’m?—

I give what I intend to be a reassuring wave. It comes out as something closer to a flap, and then I walk back to my car with the specific speed of someone who isnotrunning.

Then I sit in the driver’s seat and I lock the doors.

I check every bank account.

Every account.

Like, even the ones formy businessthat isentirely my ownthat I started with myown two hands.

I put the phone face-down on the passenger seat and I look at the hotel through the windshield.

This is Jake, who set up all the accounts because it would be easier, and Jake, who handled the business paperwork because I was having particularly bad migraines the month I was setting up the LLC. He didn’t think I ought to be exerting myself so much setting up a business at all, so I was touched when he went and did all the bank account setup for me.

He was sohelpful.

In fact, he’s just been helpfully taking care of things for so long that I stopped noticingwhichthings he was taking care of. Or the fact that it waseverything.

And I didn’t notice that I had no idea where things like account numbers are actually stored, or… you know, whosenamewas actually on all the accounts… until right now.