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“What’s your account number?” she asks.
I read off the number from the statement and wait. Finally, she says, “I’m going to connect you with an account manager who will be able to help you.”
I’m on hold again, and I return to the box to find the cable statements, going back five months—all with the bottom portion torn off, presumably paid. But a small voice in my head reminds me that gamblers are very good at deception.
The account manager comes on the line, and I run through the situation again, feeling a headache build behind my eyes. Finally, she says, “Your account is sixty days past due, so service has been turned off. You can pay right now with a credit card, or come into our office with a money order. The total due to resume service is $473.94.”
I collapse on the couch and close my eyes.
“Ms. Roberts?” the woman prompts. “What would you like to do?”
“I’ll pay with a credit card,” I say.
***
As soon as I’m done, I call Scott’s cell.
“I just paid over $400 to reconnect our cable and internet,” I say when he answers.
“What?” Scott says.
“Why didn’t you pay the bill?”
“I did pay the bill.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Scott. It was sixty days late.”
Scott blows out hard and says, “Look. I admit, I lost track of one month. Thought I’d paid it, but I didn’t. But when the next bill came and I realized I hadn’t, I paid it then. In full.”
“Well, that’s funny, because when I spoke to them on the phone just now, they never got the payment.”
“You know, if you’d let me pay the bills online like every other fucking person in the world, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Don’t turn this around on me,” I say. “We agreed, along with Dr. Carter, that online payments of any kind could be a trigger for you. Keeping your financial stuff offline is the best way to protect your recovery.” Before he can argue with me, I push on. “What concerns me more is that you put the stubs in the box anyway, making it appear as if you’d paid them. It’s not that you forgot; we all get busy. But it’s the way you worked to conceal it that’s the problem.”
“Because I knew you’d turn it into something it wasn’t.”
I stare out the window, feeling unsettled. Scott’s story makes sense. There’s been no evidence of gambling. His phone and computer are consistently clean. He’s always where he says he’ll be, and I’m more likely to be in front of my computer in the middle of the night than he is. When he’d shown me the new bank statement he’d requested the other week, there’d been no unusual activity. The balance had been lower than I’d hoped, but there weren’t any large cash withdrawals or any of the other red flags that would indicate he wasn’t doing exactly what he said he was—working the program.
And yet, this is how it starts—with unpaid bills and creditors calling.
He continues. “You’re ignoring the bigger problem, which is that you refuse to consider Meg is the one behind all of this. And now it appears she’s targeting me too.”
“What would Meg want with our internet and cable bill?”
“You’d be surprised,” he says. “Washing checks, using the account and router number to buy something else.”
I try to see things from Scott’s perspective, but my instincts are telling me this isn’t how she works. Meg doesn’t need our money. “I know you’re worried, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.”
“Fine,” he says, his tone sharp. “I guess you know more about this than I do.”
“I spend hours with her, every day,” I say. “Do you think you’re the only one who has the ability to read a person?”
“I know you think you know her,” he says. “But you don’t. Not really.”
