Chapter 4 - The First Payment
The first payment had not been $1,200.
It had been $300.
Lily was six weeks old.
Marlene came to the house carrying groceries and acting helpful.
Before leaving, she asked Nora to step into the garage.
“She said she was behind on something,” Nora explained. “I don’t even remember what. A credit card, maybe.”
“And you just gave her money?”
“She reminded me about the hospital.”
Not directly.
That was what made it easy for Nora to lie to herself.
Marlene said, “Families are fragile after a baby. No reason Ethan needs to hear things that would upset him.”
Nora understood.
She withdrew $300.
The next month Marlene asked for $500.
By Lily’s fourth month, it became $1,200.
“What was she spending it on?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked?”
“I was scared.”
Ethan paced the kitchen.
“You were scared of me?”
Nora hesitated.
That hurt more than he expected.
“I was scared of what you’d believe.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
Ethan stopped.
Nora reminded him how often he had defended Marlene.
When Nora complained that Marlene entered their house without knocking, Ethan called it “Mom being Mom.”
When Marlene criticized Nora’s parenting, Ethan said she came from another generation.
When Marlene rearranged Lily’s nursery because she thought Nora had organized it incorrectly, Ethan laughed.
Nora had learned a lesson Ethan had never intended to teach her.
His mother always got the benefit of the doubt.
His wife had to prove the harm first.
“I thought if she told you I’d asked about giving Lily up, you’d hear her version before mine,” Nora said.
Ethan wanted to deny it.
He couldn’t.
Then another question occurred to him.
“Why did you keep letting her around Lily?”
Nora’s shame deepened.
“Because keeping her close made her easier to manage.”
Ethan stared.
“You let a woman who was blackmailing you babysit our daughter?”
“I thought she hated me.”
“And today?”
Nora looked toward the stairs.
Neither of them needed to finish the sentence.
May you like
Marlene had thrown Lily’s toy away, soaked her blanket, and told a baby she should have been left at the hospital.
Whatever Nora thought she had been controlling had never been under control at all.
