Chapter 2 - The Missing Years
The kitchen of our shack measured roughly ten by twelve feet. The linoleum flooring was peeling away at the corners, exposing the dark, splintered plywood beneath. Grandpa Charles sat rigidly on our one good wooden chair—the one where the left leg had been shimmed with a folded-up matchbook—while Noah sat on the floor near his feet, quietly coloring in his notebook with a broken crayon.
I stood by the counter, my arms tightly crossed over my chest, staring down at the chipped formica surface where a box of saltines sat next to an empty jar of instant coffee.
“Explain it to me again, slowly,” Grandpa said, his voice dangerously quiet. The fury had receded, replaced by a cold, calculating disbelief that terrified me more than his shouting.
“After Noah was born,” I began, my throat tight, “I had that severe postpartum hemorrhage. Remember? You were in Zurich for the medical convention.”
Grandpa nodded stiffly. “I remember. Ryan called me and said you were recovering in a private clinic.”
“I was in the county hospital for twelve days,” I corrected softly. “And then I spent six weeks in bed, barely able to walk across the room without blacking out. Ryan took over everything. He said you had sent a lawyer to handle the paperwork for the wedding gift house—the Preston Hollow property.”
Grandpa’s eyebrows drew together in a sharp line. “I didn't send a lawyer. I handed the original deed and the trust documents directly to Ryan at my office in downtown Dallas two weeks before the wedding. He told me you both agreed the location was too public, too difficult to maintain with a newborn, and that you wanted to sell it and invest the capital into his business ventures.”
My breath caught in my throat. The room seemed to tilt slightly.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No, Ryan said... Ryan said you were furious when you found out I was pregnant before the wedding. He said you tore up the deed in your office. He said you told him that since I’d married ‘a man without a prestigious family name or a dime to his credit,’ you were cutting me off completely.”
Grandpa stood up so fast the matchbook shim flew out from under the chair leg, clattering against the linoleum.
“I loved your mother,” Grandpa growled, his face flushing a dark, mottled red. “And I love you, Emily. I don’t care about pedigree. I cared that you were safe. Why would Ryan lie about something like that?”
“He said we had to be smart,” I continued, the memories rushing back with terrifying clarity, fitting together like pieces of a poisoned puzzle. “He said your investments had taken a massive hit during the market correction that year. He told me the house purchase had fallen through because the title was contested, and we needed to clear our debts before we could even think about a mortgage.”
I looked down at my hands, remembering every sacrifice I had made over the past twenty-four months, believing every word of the narrative Ryan had woven around us like a spider’s web.
“Ryan started commuting to Oklahoma City,” I said, my voice barely audible above the hum of the old refrigerator. “He told me he’d landed a management position at an automotive manufacturing plant. He said the pay was good, but he had to stay in a company-provided apartment during the week because the drive was too brutal.”
“How much money did he send you?” Grandpa asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
“Almost nothing,” I admitted, the shame burning hot in my chest. “Just a couple hundred dollars every month or two, claiming the corporate taxes and union dues were eating up his salary. He said we had to live lean so he could pay off the legal fees from your supposed ‘lawsuit’ over the property.”
That was why I had sold my 2018 Honda Civic to a junkyard for eight hundred dollars when Noah needed dental surgery. That was why I had walked four miles to the pawnshop to hock the pearl earrings my mother had worn on her wedding day—the only thing I had left of her. That was why I had dropped out of my final semester at community college, abandoning my accounting degree because I couldn't afford the twenty-dollar parking pass, let alone the textbook fees.
When Noah got sick with bronchial pneumonia last winter, I hadn't called an ambulance. I had borrowed three hundred dollars from a predatory payday lender with a four-hundred-percent interest rate, a debt that had snowballed until collection agencies called our landline twelve times a day—a landline we eventually had to disconnect because we couldn't pay the bill.
Some weeks, I had lived on black coffee and buttered tortillas so my little boy could have eggs and whole milk for dinner. I wore clothes from church donation bins. I patched Noah’s shoes with Gorilla Glue.
And all the while, my husband—the man I had trusted with my body, my heart, and my future—had been living a completely different life.
Grandpa Charles walked over to the small window, looking out at the cracked dirt yard and the rusted fence. When he turned back around, his eyes were wet, but his jaw was set like iron.
“Get your coat, Emily,” he said.
“What?”
“Get your coat. And get Noah’s bag.” Grandpa pulled a sleek leather wallet from his jacket, extracted a business card, and pulled a heavy gold fountain pen from his pocket. He flipped the card over and scribbled a string of numbers and an address across the back.
May you like
He handed it to me.
“Go there tomorrow morning at nine o'clock,” Grandpa instructed, his voice ringing with absolute authority. “Do not call Ryan. Do not text him. And Emily—whatever happens, do not sign another document, no matter what is put in front of you.”
