Chapter 5 - The Friday Morning Audit
The house was cold at six-thirty.
Theo was up early, as he always was, sitting on the living room rug in his dinosaur pajamas, lining up his wooden train cars into a single, unbroken track that stretched from the television stand to the sofa. He had a small plastic bowl of dry Cheerios between his knees, his four-year-old brow furrowed with intense concentration.
“Mommy?” he asked without looking up as I walked into the room with a mug of black coffee. “Did Grandma like the big bird?”
I stopped beside the sofa, looking down at his small, round shoulders.
“Grandma had a different dinner, Theo,” I said gently, crouching down so I was at his eye level. “We took the big bird to Nana’s house. Nana and Sandra had it with lots of gravy.”
“Nana has the funny spoons,” he remarked, satisfied with the explanation, and pushed a red engine down the track with a sharp clack-clack.
He didn't ask why he hadn't gone to Brenda’s house. He didn't ask about his cousins. At four years old, he already knew that Brenda’s house was a place where you didn't touch the glass animals on the low tables and where your shoes had to stay in the mudroom even if your socks were thin.
The front door clicked open.
Graham had gone out at six to get the paper and a coffee from the corner shop—an old habit from his bachelor days that he revived whenever our house became too small for his comfort. He walked into the kitchen carrying a brown paper bag, set it on the counter, and saw me standing by the dining room table with my laptop open.
“You’re up early,” he said. He sounded tired, the fight from midnight drained out of him, replaced by the cautious, walking-on-eggshells demeanor he used after any major family rupture.
“I have clinic paperwork,” I said.
That was half-true. I had thirty-two patient logs to sign off on before Monday morning, but that wasn't what was on the screen.
On the screen was our joint bank statement from the last four months.
I hadn't looked at the ledger with an auditor’s eye in years. When we got married, Graham had taken over the primary household accounting because he was the finance guy, the one who understood tax brackets and mortgage amortization. I had simply transferred forty percent of my clinical paycheck into the joint account every two weeks, assuming it covered our half of the mortgage, the daycare fees, and our shared savings.
“Graham,” I said, not looking up from the trackpad. “What is the four-hundred-dollar monthly transfer to ‘Hendrick Holdings’?”
He froze with his travel mug halfway to his mouth.
“That’s the family property trust,” he said. His voice was careful. “For the cottage on Lake Simcoe.”
“We haven't been to Lake Simcoe in three years,” I said. “Every time we ask for a weekend in August, Renee has already booked it for her law firm colleagues, or your mother says Walter needs the place quiet for his blood pressure.”
“It’s the maintenance fund, Margo. It’s an investment. The property stays in the family.”
“Whose family?” I turned the laptop around so the screen faced him across the island. “Because I just checked the land registry records on the provincial portal. The title on that cottage was transferred to Renee’s name three years ago after Walter’s stroke. You aren't on the deed, Graham. You’re just paying forty percent of her property taxes.”
He set the mug down with a hard, wet slap against the granite.
“My mother set that up for tax efficiency! Renee’s firm handled the conveyance! Why are you digging through five-year-old land records at seven in the morning?”
“Because yesterday I realized that I’ve been paying for the privilege of being insulted for seven years,” I said, standing up. “I bought the twenty-two-pound turkey, Graham. I paid eighty-six dollars at the butcher on Danforth with my personal debit card because you said your mother’s account was tight this month. And then your mother sat in her seven-hundred-thousand-dollar house, sighed at my work, and your sister called it dry before she even took off her coat.”
Theo looked up from his trains, his small hands pausing on the wooden engine.
“Mommy?” he whispered.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, my voice softening instantly as I looked down at him. “Daddy and I are just talking about the grocery bills. Keep building your bridge.”
I turned back to Graham, lowering my voice so it barely traveled beyond the kitchen counter.
“I’m opening a separate account on Monday,” I told him. “My salary goes into my name. I will transfer my exact half of the mortgage and Theo’s school fees into the joint account on the first of the month. Not a penny more. If your sister needs four hundred dollars for her cottage dock, she can bill her corporate clients.”
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Graham stared at me, his eyes wide, his mouth set in a thin, pale line. For the first time since I met him at a campus coffee shop in Kingston eleven years ago, he looked at me and didn't see someone he could soothe with a reasonable sentence and an expensive bottle of wine.
He saw someone who was already packing the car.
