He’s a good talker and a hard worker but VP? With a $47,000 signing bonus? I didn’t say anything.
I just ran the numbers like a good bookkeeper and put the money toward Nolan’s tuition, Bridget’s braces, and the roof that was leaking into the guest bathroom every time it rained.
I should have asked questions. I know that now.
Then Bridget’s 9th grade biology teacher assigned a genetics project. Family heritage.
Ancestry mapping. I ordered a 23andMe kit because Bridget said everyone in her class was doing it and I thought it’d be fun. I swabbed her cheek on a Tuesday night while she was eating Totino’s pizza rolls, the pepperoni kind, and I sealed it up and mailed it and didn’t think about it again.
43 days later.
Saturday morning. Dale was at Home Depot getting caulk for the bathroom. Gerald was God knows where.
I opened the app on my laptop at the kitchen table. There was a pot of Folgers already on the warmer and the dog, this ridiculous beagle we have named Captain, was whining to go outside. And I was just sitting there.
The match list loaded.
I saw Gerald’s name.
Not as grandfather.
As father.
I don’t know what I felt.
Angry? Sick? Blank?
I think blank. Like my brain hit a wall and just stopped. The coffee went cold.
Captain started scratching at the back door. I could hear the neighbors’ kid bouncing a basketball in their driveway. And I was just staring at this screen with my reading glasses sliding down my nose.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t cry. I just sat there and thought about the pizza rolls. She was eating pizza rolls when I swabbed her cheek.
Pepperoni. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and I told her to use a napkin. That’s what I was thinking about.
The napkin.
I know that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is obvious. But the pizza rolls and the napkin and the way she just opened her mouth for the swab like it was nothing.
That’s what I keep coming back to.
I called my sister Deborah. She drove over in fourteen minutes. I showed her the screen.
She sat right in Gerald’s chair and said, “Gerald?”
Just that. One word.
We sat on the porch for a while. She smoked three Newports back to back.
She quit four years ago. I didn’t have anything to say and she didn’t push it. That’s the thing about Deborah.
She knows when to just be there.
After she left I started looking. The bookkeeper in me kicked in. I pulled statements, I pulled records, I looked into that promotion.
And I found it.
Gerald sits on the board of the company that promoted Dale. Not just any board seat. He’s on the compensation committee.
He approved the hire. He signed off on the $47,000 signing bonus. He arranged the whole thing.
I don’t know when it started.
I don’t know if Dale knows about Bridget. God, I don’t know if Dale knows and STAYED or if Gerald did something to me that I — I’m not gonna finish that sentence. I’ve been going over it with a counselor.
Whole separate mess and this post is already long enough.
There’s also a thing with Gerald’s late wife, Dale’s mother. Something Deborah found when she helped me pull the family files. I’m not getting into all that right now because it’s its own thing and I don’t have the energy.
But she wasn’t the saint they said she was. Or maybe she was. Maybe she knew too.
I don’t know.
I confronted Gerald first. Not Dale. Gerald.
I drove to his house on a Monday morning and told him what the test showed. He was making eggs. He stood there holding a spatula and the eggs were burning and the smoke detector started going off and he didn’t move, he just stood there looking at me.
And then he said the sentence I’m never gonna forget.
“Maureen, you put the seed money in. That makes you the investor, not the wife.”
I still don’t understand what that means. I’ve repeated it to Deborah and to my counselor and to my lawyer Patricia and none of us understand what he meant.
But he said it like it was the truest thing he’d ever said. Flat. Like it was nothing.
I left.
The eggs were still burning. The smoke detector was still going. He didn’t follow me out.
Dale and I had the conversation two days later.
He came in through the garage and went straight for the fridge, like he always does, and he had the door open and was reaching for the orange juice before he even looked up and saw Deborah sitting at the table. He said “what’s — ” and then didn’t finish. He stood there holding his keys for way too long.
I’m not gonna tell you everything he said.
Some of it sounded like excuses. Some of it sounded like a man who genuinely didn’t know. I don’t know which was worse.
Bridget doesn’t know yet.
That’s the part that wakes me up at 3 AM. She’s 14. She has braces and a biology project and a beagle she loves and NO IDEA that the man she calls Grandpa is actually — I can’t type it again.
I’ve got a lawyer.
I’ve got the DNA results saved in three places. I’ve got the board records showing Gerald’s signature on Dale’s promotion paperwork. I’ve got $211 in my checking account right now because I moved everything else into a separate account Deborah helped me open at a credit union.
Nolan is at Georgia State.
I haven’t told him yet. I don’t know if I should.
I drove past Gerald’s house once last week. Not on purpose.
Okay, maybe a little on purpose. The eggs smell was gone but his car was in the driveway and there was a Publix bag on the porch and that somehow made everything worse. I don’t know why.
It just did.
I still have the 23andMe app on my phone. I keep meaning to delete it but I don’t.
—
*If your best friend needs to see this, you know what to do.*
