The Bandage on the Other Side

The folder held a sheaf of papers fastened by a thick black clip. I expected account statements, but the first page was a contract, printed on heavy paper with faint marks beneath the ink. Its title was long and solemn: Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement & Voluntary Relinquishment of Parental Rights.

In the corner, I found the date: October 12, two years earlier. That was the same week Dad had loaded his silver car and left us behind.

I dragged one finger down the page. The words tangled together, too grown-up for me to understand all at once. But I could read the important part. Mom, Eleanor Miller, would have sole custody of Aaron and me. Dad gave up every right to visit us, now or later.

I turned the page. Three copied papers had been fastened behind the agreement.

The first showed a cashier’s check made payable to Dad. I stared at the amount, then blinked and looked again. The number still said $115,000.

The next page came from a joint savings account I had never heard about. It showed that the account had been emptied. Two days before the check was issued, exactly $115,000 had been taken out.

The final paper made my stomach clench. It was an application for a second mortgage on our house, filled in with Dad’s familiar, tangled handwriting. At the bottom, beside his name, was Mom’s. Or an attempt at it. Her real signature was graceful and sure. This one looked crooked and uncertain.

Underneath, Mom had stuck a note in her own handwriting. It said she had proof of the forgery and would take it to the district attorney if Dad ever came back.

All at once, the pieces locked together, and the answer hurt.

Dad hadn’t simply stopped loving us and driven away. He had taken money from their account, then tried to borrow against the house by pretending Mom had agreed. He had put the roof over our heads at risk.

And Mom had caught him.

She had used what remained of her inheritance to settle the dishonest loan. Then she had given Dad money, with the evidence of his crime held over him, and made him surrender his place in our lives.

Aaron had said Mom didn’t send Dad away. Maybe she paid him to leave.

But she hadn’t bought him. She had paid a ransom for us.

A band of yellow light appeared beneath the office door.

I stopped breathing. The handle moved, and the door opened.

Mom stood there in her navy robe, her hair loose and uneven around her face. Without her daytime posture and practiced smile, she seemed much smaller than usual. Tired, too, in a way I had never noticed before.

Her eyes went to me, then to the folder in my hands. She didn’t raise her voice or hurry across the room to take it away. Instead, she shut her eyes and leaned against the frame, like something inside her had finally given way.

“I told you not to keep searching, Ruby,” she said. Her voice wavered.

I lifted the loan application. My fingers shook so hard the paper fluttered. “He signed your name. He was trying to take our house.”

Mom opened her eyes and came into the office. She eased herself into the chair behind the desk and placed her hands together in her lap.

“Your father owed money,” she said quietly. “More than he could pay. He drank and gambled, and the people he owed weren’t the sort who cared whether a man had children. When his own money was gone, he took ours. Then he tried for the house.”

She glanced down at her hands. “I found the mortgage papers in the mail. If the loan had gone through, we might have lost the house in six months. You and Aaron would have had nowhere to go.”

Tears gathered on my lashes. “So you gave him all that money so he’d leave?”

“I gave him two choices,” she said, raising her eyes to mine. Tears shone there, but her expression stayed firm. “He could take the inheritance I got from my parents, use it to pay what he owed, and leave the state. Or I could give those forged papers to the police and let him face fraud charges. If he took the money, he had to give up his rights to both of you and disappear.”

I looked at the check again. All those zeros seemed too large for the page, too large for our house, too large for a family. “And he agreed?”

Mom’s mouth tightened. For a moment, she watched the papers as if the answer were written somewhere between the check and the signature. Then she spoke again.

“I kept this from you because I could live with you being angry at me,” she said. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you believing your own father had left because you weren’t worth staying for.”

I wanted to ask whether that was what Dad had thought. I wanted to ask if he had looked at our pictures before he left, or if he had even remembered Aaron’s birthday. The questions crowded my mouth, but none came out.

Mom reached toward the check, then stopped before touching it. “He took the money without hesitating,” she said. “He chose that check over his children.”