The day our divorce was final, his mother laughed on the courthouse steps. “Don’t worry, she’ll still pay for my hair.” I smiled and said, “Of course.”
For a long time, those cards paid for ordinary things: gas, beer, bait, the casino bus, and every Friday, Earline’s hair. The small charges showed up on my bills, and I paid them out of my paycheck and tips. I was a cook at a diner in Kittanning, and I’d been working that grill for twenty-two years. I knew how to keep track of what was burning while I handled the next order.
Faron used to pick me up after the late shift. We’d sit in his truck and split a piece of coconut cream pie with one fork, the radio on low. I can still remember the way he’d scrape the last bit from the tin. Back then, it felt like we were getting by together. I held onto that version of him longer than I should have.
In 2015, his body shop went under. His credit went with it, and so did his mother’s after she co-signed his last loan. He came to me looking tired and embarrassed.
“Just till I’m back on my feet, Ange,” he said.
I put him on my cards. Then I added his mother, Earline. The bank called them authorized users.
The accounts were in my name, the bills came to me, and I made the payments.
At first, I told myself it was temporary. Then temporary turned into years. About $600 a month went onto those cards, month after month. Once, I added it all up on a napkin. It came to about $80,000. I tore up the napkin and dropped it in the fryer trash. I didn’t want to look at the number again.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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