Page 20

Mona, the PTA mom

The sun kisses my cheeks as I step toward the bow of the boat and take in Prisoner’s Harbor. It’s absolute perfection. Calm blue waters. Rolling green hills. We practically had to fight the Pacific to get here. It was a terrible, unforgiving boat ride. But we’re here now, and it’s so beautiful, it fills me with a sense of promise. My plan is in motion, if a little improvised. It’s all going to work out.

Then I remember who’s also on the island by now.

Throughout the two-hour boat ride, my mind kept drifting to him. Why is he here? He can’t know about my plan. Maybe he found out the same thing I did? And if he took a later boat than our group, he’s definitely up to something. I check my phone. There’s no service. I can’t warn Brady again, can’t know if he got my earlier message. I have no clue what I’m walking into—twelve miles from here.

I scoot past a couple so I’m the first in line to get off the boat. I need to get to the camp as quickly as possible. I need to warn the others that he’s here.

With the budget cuts to the national parks, there aren’t any rangers to greet us at the dock, so the boat crew gives us a brief orientation, reminding us about the lack of water on this side of the island, the spotty reception, how, if we have an emergency, the best thing to do is go onto navy land and ask for help. Apparently the navy leases a mountaintop where visitors generally aren’t allowed to go. I don’t fully understand. I’m not really listening, since none of it pertains to me. In a few hours, I’ll be on the other side of the island, with my family and potable water and him. As soon as they wish us a fun—and safe—trip, I race down the dock. I follow the signs to Del Norte Road, because even though it’s listed as more strenuous, it’s significantly shorter than the flatter Navy Road.

At first, I speed walk up the sandy path, trying to pace myself. Soon, I take off running, because every extra minute is another where my family might be in danger and not realize it. As I scramble up the first steep pitch, I break into an all-out sprint. The air stings my lungs, and I push my body harder, faster, farther. It makes me feel alive and strong. But even I get out of breath running uphill. I stop for a water break and drink half a bottle without realizing it. No worries. I have another liter, plenty to get me to camp. The health app on my phone tells me I’ve traveled less than a mile. Really? How is it possible I’ve run less than a mile? Behind me, I see the other backpackers meandering up the path. Ahead, it’s all tan grasslands and rolling hills. Even in my agitated state, I’m overwhelmed by the beauty. This is why I like camping. It’s impossible not to feel blessed when you’re standing on a hilltop in the wild, a hilltop you conquered with your own two legs.

My stomach is starting to grumble, so I unwrap the Snickers. It’s warm from the sun, slightly melted, so the caramel stretches like taffy. Fuck, it tastes good. I shut my eyes and savor the sweet, salty nuts, knowing it will be years before I eat another Snickers again. When I was pregnant with each of my kids, I allowed myself one miniature Snickers a day. Even they didn’t taste as good as this one does.

I close the health app and hold my phone in the air, walking in a small circle to check for service. It’s not happening, so I put the phone in airplane mode to prolong the battery’s life. It’s 1:56. I’m sure the kids have already eaten lunch. I wonder what Raymond Zhao made. Nothing as good as this Snickers. I take another bite. Sawyer is probably glued to Lily, and I bet Brady is acting weird around Cassie. Not that she’d notice. From the first time he mentioned he was in wealth management, Cassie made it crystal clear she wanted nothing to do with him. It wasn’t like he’d started pitching her or anything. I mean, for sure, when Brady heard that Cassie Bent’s daughter was going to be in Sawyer’s class, his eyes lit up. Part of why we pay the Chester School’s exorbitant price tag is for the access. The education, too, obviously, but Brady had every intention of offering his services to our new community. Cassie never gave him the courtesy of hearing him out.

My mind races through all the parents who invested with Brady. Our friends from other parts of life, too, who will never speak to me again if they learn what Brady has done. I shouldn’t have been so slow to realize what was happening, but Brady only took—borrowed—small amounts from the PO account at a time, modest enough sums that I assumed Yoo-Jin had used the money for silent auction baskets or thank-you gifts and had simply forgotten to give me the receipts.

I didn’t realize how short we were until we were discussing the plan for the new school gym and Yoo-Jin asked, “The PO can donate one hundred thousand dollars. We’ve got, what, close to seven hundred?” The balance showed more like four hundred, and I felt my heart rate spike as everyone at the meeting turned to me for confirmation. “A hundred’s no problem,” I said, somehow managing to keep my voice steady despite the creeping suspicion that something was terribly wrong. I’m nothing if not unflappable in a stressful situation.

In the privacy of my own home, where I could curse and pace and openly panic, I did a thorough audit of the books. That’s when I noticed the missing checks, the online account history that listed numerous payments to me that I’d never seen. It’s absolutely normal for the PO to pay its president back for advanced payments on vendors, equipment rentals, things like that. The amounts on the checks themselves weren’t particularly alarming, not for an institution like the Chester School. Except I hadn’t cashed them. And while the signature was a convincing approximation of my own, the handwriting on the pay-to-the-order-of line wasn’t. Instead, it was chicken scratch I knew all too well.

You’d better believe I was pissed. More than anything, I was baffled. Why would Brady take—borrow—money from the PO? We were good on our mortgage and car payments, the school tuition. And Brady’s business was constantly growing. It made no sense.

The night I discovered Brady’s misdeeds, I fed each of the kids a melatonin gummy and sent them to bed early. Listen, don’t judge until you’ve discovered that your husband stole three hundred thousand dollars. It’s not like I fed them an Ambien or anything. Then I waited for Brady in the kitchen, my ledger and the other hard evidence laid out before me, my mind wildly flip-flopping between all-out worry and a rage I’d never felt before. Did he have a gambling problem? If it was a mistress, I’d go full Lorena Bobbitt on him. Was he being blackmailed? What the hell did Brady need that kind of money for? All the thoughts circled one heartbreaking question: Why didn’t he come to me?

Brady whistled as he walked through the door, startled to find me seated at the kitchen table. His nose was red in the way that told me he’d had one too many whiskeys, neat.

“Anything you’d like to tell me?” I asked before he had a chance to compose himself.

He sat heavily into the chair beside mine, not yet spotting the paperwork on the table, prepared instead for a fight we knew too well.

“Babe, I had two drinks. And I stopped an hour ago. You want me to walk the line?” He stood up and started walking straight. He reached his arms wide, then stood on one foot, putting his index fingers to the tip of his red nose. “See, fine.”

“Sit down,” I said, and his confusion persisted until he noticed the ledger that read Parents Organization on the front.

“It’s not what you think,” he stammered. Immediately, I wanted to collapse on the floor because I was hoping he’d tell me I had it all wrong. I was hoping this wasn’t our entire world falling apart.

The story he told me was both worse and better than anything I’d been imagining. I was right that he’d needed the PO money to replenish the funds he’d taken from his clients. Only it wasn’t for a mistress or a blackmailer. And the truth cracked me in two.

I knew we were paying for Brady’s dad’s around-the-clock, in-home care. I knew that didn’t come cheap. I just didn’t realize quite how expensive it was, how quickly Brady had blown through our savings and began to dip into his clients’ accounts.

“It was only supposed to be one time, until new investments started coming in,” he pleaded. “Then the Rottingers pulled out and so I had to cover with some funds from the Potters and then . . .” His voice trailed off. One bad judgment call led to a series of terrible choices that landed squarely at the PO’s feet.

“How could you let this happen?” I paced the kitchen, unable to look at him. I started thinking about all the Bernie Madoffs who had never gotten away with this. “Jesus, Brady. Do you realize what kind of trouble you’re in?” I love Brady, but let’s face it, he’s no Madoff. Not in wit or reputation. Not in composure either. I could see the dark circles, the extra inch of padding around his waist, the toll this secret was taking on him. It was almost enough to make me feel bad for him—if it were just himself he was endangering here. “Who’s going to believe I didn’t write you those checks?”

“He’s my father.” His voice cracked. His formidable father, who was confined to a wheelchair by a stroke, incontinent and speech impaired. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You weren’t supposed to steal three hundred thousand dollars from the PO.” It was the first time I’d said the number out loud and it literally stole my breath. I leaned down, trying to focus on my inhalations and exhalations. My system went into fight-or-flight panic.

I felt Brady pull my torso up and into him as he wrapped his arms around me.

“I’m sorry, Moan. I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to let any of this happen.” He kept apologizing, and in that moment, I had a decision to make. I could hang him out to dry, or I could save my family. It wasn’t exactly a choice.

We spent the next few hours coming up with a plan. Fortunately, Brady had paid back everything he’d taken from his clients, so it was just the PO we had to worry about. It was still an unfathomably deep hole, but with careful planning, we could climb out of it. By the time we had a budget outlined, one that started with putting his father in a home and ended with paying every cent back to the Parents Organization, it was light outside.

By the following week, Brady’s dad’s house was on the market and we had a space for him in an assisted living community on Villa. Despite the fact that his house hadn’t been renovated since the previous century, Brady’s childhood home was in a coveted part of Westwood. It sold quickly, for well over asking, which was obviously great. Except Brady’s dad had made his own poor financial choices, and the money that was left after the second mortgage was enough for one year at the center, which we were required to pay in advance. We came up with a monthly budget—a word neither of us had ever lived by—that included a moratorium on DoorDash and weekly sushi nights, postponements on the new 5 Series BMW that I’d been dying for, and a pause on sleepaway camp on the East Coast for Sawyer and the school’s ski week, but did not require me to go back to work. I’d been out of the corporate real estate game too long. The game itself had become more of a club sport at best, and I didn’t have the contacts to start poaching big enough residential listings to make it worthwhile.

We had a plan, one that would take some time but would have gone off without a hitch—if Cassie hadn’t decided that the best way to punish me was to take over PO.

I return my phone to my backpack, hoist the bag over my shoulder, and resume walking. I’ve been on the island for almost an hour. At this rate, it will be another six hours before I get to the campground, almost nightfall. Pick up the pace here, Watson. These are hills, not mountains. You can do hills in your sleep. I count to three and charge up. To my right, a raven glides through the air. I watch it angle its body as it gracefully slices across the sky. Beneath me, my foot slips on some loose soil. I try to catch myself by hopping up, only, as I do, my left foot bends at an odd angle. Then I feel my ankle pop.