Chapter 4

When Joan got home, Bernice and Molly were already there.

Dominic had made a quick pass at tidying the living room, but the air still sat heavy. Bernice lounged on the couch cracking sunflower seeds, spitting the shells all over the floor. Molly was playing a game on the new phone Dominic had just bought her.

"Well, look who's back. Her ladyship," Molly said, not even lifting her eyes. "My brother's been starving for hours. What kind of wife are you?"

Bernice shot Joan a sideways look and gave a snort. "Wives these days, so precious. Dom, I'm not saying this to hurt you, but a man has to have a backbone. You keep the money in your own hands, or one day some woman runs off with all of it."

Dominic sat nearby peeling an orange, chiming right in. "Mom's right. Joan, go make dinner already. It's not often she comes over."

Joan carried in the wilted, leftover greens she'd picked out at the market, bought with the last dozen or so dollars in her pocket. She said nothing and walked into the kitchen.

In the kitchen, she washed the vegetables on autopilot while the laughing and talking outside kept drifting in, needling at her.

"Dom, why's your study locked? I want to grab a book to read." That was Molly.

"Oh, Joan probably locked it. The key's in the drawer, help yourself." Dominic, not caring in the least.

Joan's hands froze. The study held every secret she had: the ledger, the design drafts, and that thing she'd just printed out.

She didn't stop to dry her hands, just rushed out of the kitchen. "Don't go in the study!"

Too late.

There was a click, and Molly had already twisted the lock open.

A few minutes later Molly came running out with a thick stack of drafts and a handful of bank withdrawal slips, shrieking like she'd discovered a whole new world. "Dom! Mom! Come look at this! I told you she was hiding private savings! Look what this is!"

Dominic snatched the drafts and slips out of her hands. The drafts were polished commercial poster designs, signed "Ran" in the bottom right corner. The withdrawal slips showed the same few deposits coming in every month; not large amounts, but they added up, tens of thousands over time.

The worst part was the ledger. Every single expense recorded in cramped rows:

March 5, groceries, $20 (Mother-in-law didn't give money, paid it myself).

April 12, Dominic's cold medicine, $35 (Mother-in-law refused to give money, paid it myself).

May 1, mother-in-law's birthday gift, $1,000 (from freelance work).

Dominic looked at all of it, his face shifting from shock to anger and finally to the ugly fury of a man caught out. It felt like a direct assault on his authority. So this woman had been doing all this behind his back the whole time? She had money and still cried poor to him?

"Well, well, Joan." Dominic hurled the design drafts hard into her face, the sharp edge of the paper slicing across her cheek and leaving a red mark. "Aren't you something. Crying poor to my mom and begging for money, while you're out taking freelance jobs building your own little slush fund? All these years you've eaten my food and lived under my roof, and every dollar you saved went to prop up your own family, didn't it? Huh?"

The instant Bernice heard "private savings," she sprang up off the couch, jabbing a finger at Joan. "I knew it, an ungrateful stray you can never raise right! Dom, you can't keep a woman like this! Get all the money back!"

Joan stood there, looking at the design drafts scattered across the floor, the work of countless days and nights, now trampled like garbage.

All at once she didn't want to explain.

Three years. What good had explaining ever done?

She looked at Dominic's twisted face and felt, for the first time, how much of a stranger this man was, how ugly.

"Dominic," Joan said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was strangely clear. "That money, I earned it myself. The fifty thousand you handed over is all in your mother's hands. I haven't spent a single cent of yours in this house."

"Bullshit!" Dominic roared. "Without me supporting you, you think you'd have the time to draw this stuff? Without the place I provide, you think you'd have anywhere to live? Everything you have, I gave you! Now transfer every last dollar in your account to me, or don't blame me for what comes next!"