Chapter 7
The headquarters of Apex Heating & Air was located in an industrial park off Roberts Road. A fleet of blue and white service vans sat parked in neat rows behind a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.
I had dropped Adam off here dozens of times when his truck was in the shop. I had baked cookies for their Christmas party last December. The owner, Greg Callahan, was an old softball buddy of Adam’s who had attended our wedding.
When Diane and I walked through the double glass doors into the small reception lobby, the receptionist—a young woman named Brenda with bright purple fingernails—looked up from her computer.
"Hi, Natalie!" Brenda smiled warmly, then glanced behind me. "Are you looking for Adam? He doesn't usually come through the front office."
"Is Greg in?" I asked, keeping my voice level.
"Sure is. Let me buzz him."
Two minutes later, Greg Callahan stepped into the lobby, wiping grease from his hands with a red shop rag. He was a broad-shouldered man with a graying beard and friendly crinkles around his eyes.
"Nat! Look at you, almost ready to pop!" He came forward with open arms, but paused when he caught the look on my face and saw Diane standing rigid beside me. His smile faded. "Everything okay? Adam didn't say you were coming by."
"Greg, can we talk in your office for five minutes?" I asked.
Greg looked between us, his expression turning wary. "Yeah. Sure. Come on back."
His office smelled of stale coffee, motor oil, and old paper. Blueprints and scheduling clipboards covered the walls. He closed the door behind us and gestured toward two vinyl chairs.
"What’s going on, Natalie? Is something wrong with the baby?"
"The baby is fine," I said, sitting down heavily. "Greg... when was the last time Adam was here?"
Greg froze. He stared at me, his jaw tightening under his beard. He looked down at the shop rag in his hands, slowly folding it into a neat square.
"Natalie..."
"Greg, please," I said, my voice cracking slightly. "I need the truth. Don't protect him. The bank is foreclosing on our house."
Greg swore under his breath, tossing the rag onto his cluttered desk. He slumped back into his rolling chair and rubbed his face with both hands.
"I fired him six weeks ago, Nat."
The words hit me like a bucket of ice water. The room seemed to contract.
"Six weeks?" I whispered. "He left the house every single morning at seven o'clock. In his work uniform. He kissed me goodbye. He came home at five-thirty smelling like sweat."
"He was stealing from the supply cage," Greg said, his voice heavy with regret. "Copper tubing. Replacement compressor units. Small stuff at first, then entire pallets of R-410A refrigerant. We’re talking twelve thousand dollars' worth of inventory over four months."
"Why didn't you call the police?" Diane demanded, her voice vibrating with suppressed fury.
"Because Adam was Arthur’s son," Greg snapped back, looking at Diane with raw pain in his eyes. "Arthur helped my dad start this business forty years ago! I couldn't throw Arthur's boy in prison! I told him if he returned the inventory he hadn't pawned yet and signed an agreement to pay back the remaining seven grand out of his final severance, I wouldn't press charges. He swore he was taking another job at a commercial refrigeration plant in Dublin."
"He didn't take another job," I whispered, the horrific puzzle pieces falling into place. "He spent all day sitting in parking lots on his phone. Gambling."
"I’m so sorry, Natalie," Greg said softly. "If I had known he was lying to you... if I had known you were about to have this baby without insurance—"
"Wait," I interrupted, my head snapping up. "What did you say?"
"His health insurance terminated on October thirty-first," Greg said. "He elected not to sign the COBRA continuation paperwork. He said you were switching to your school district’s policy."
The breath left my lungs entirely.
My school district’s open enrollment window had closed in September. I had declined the district coverage because Adam had repeatedly assured me that his union-backed commercial policy through Apex had better maternity coverage with a lower deductible.
I was eight months pregnant.
I had no health insurance.
May you like
And in four weeks, I was scheduled to enter a hospital to deliver our child.
***
