Divorced at 35: My Two Million Payback

02

I took the morning off and went straight to my best friend Imogen Fox's law firm.

She looked at me. "This could count as moving marital assets. What do you want?"

I heard my own voice come out dry. "A divorce. And I want the marital money back."

"His mom's treatment alone is six thousand a month. That's seventy-two thousand a year. Over three years, two hundred sixteen thousand."

The more I added it up, the more my palms started to sweat.

Austin makes thirty thousand a month. Three hundred sixty thousand a year. Over three years, one million eighty thousand.

But he played broke with me. I covered the holiday gifts, I covered the daily expenses, and I don't have a single cent saved.

So where did my money go?

All of it poured into his lies.

"For now, don't tip him off. Let me file for asset protection first, so he can't move everything out from under you."

We were still talking when the police department called.

"Is this Isabella Harding? Your parents got lost. Come to the station and pick them up."

My heart clenched hard, and the phone nearly slipped again.

This morning Austin had offered to pick up my parents himself. When their train came in, he'd even told me, "Got them."

So whose parents had he actually picked up?

I rushed to the station and saw them from a distance, sitting on a long bench, the backs of their shirts soaked through with sweat.

The moment my mother saw me, she hunched over and started apologizing over and over. "I told your dad to take a cab, but he said it wasn't far, insisted on walking to save money, and then we got lost..."

"Austin didn't—" I took their luggage from them, and the words in my mouth changed. "I forgot to come get you."

My dad's mouth moved. My mom jabbed him with her elbow.

I looked down and saw my dad's shoes, a handkerchief folded into the heel, the edge worn through, his walk gone lopsided.

He'd bought them for the wedding. He only wore them on "important occasions."

My eyes stung, and I turned my face away.

Austin's call came right on cue.

"Bella, I waited half an hour and your parents never showed, so I left. Linda's parents' AC stopped cooling, and I was worried, so I went over to check on it."

"Oh, and just have your parents go straight to the hostel by the entrance. I booked them a mixed four-person room. There'll be people to chat with, so they won't be lonely..."

"Austin!" My hand tightened around the phone.

"You dumped your own wife's parents at the train station and ran around waiting on some other woman's parents. Do you have any idea my parents got lost in the city?"

Austin's voice came back louder than mine.

"Bella, can you not blow this up? Your parents are grown adults. How could they possibly get lost?"

"Linda's parents were good to me when I was a kid. They're not strangers. Why can't you show a little of that kindness to your elders and to others' elders too?"

I heard my own breathing go heavy, but I didn't say anything else.

Because my parents were standing right there.

My mother was still smoothing it over, muttering, "Austin's away on a business trip, isn't he?"

My dad kept his head down, staring at those ill-fitting shoes, the handkerchief slipping halfway out of the heel.

I couldn't let them see how tight my life had become.

I hung up, hooked my arm through my mother's, and silently apologized to them.