“You handed me papers in front of two hundred people.
So yes, this is the place.”
Eleanor put her hand on Nathan’s arm.
“Nathan, perhaps—”
“How long have you known?” I asked her directly.
She didn’t answer immediately.
That was its own answer.
“Eleanor.” I kept my voice level.
“How long?”
“This is a private family matter,” she said.
“I am his wife.
I was his wife while I worked two jobs and paid his tuition and gave up my own medical degree so he could stand on that stage today.” I opened the envelope and held up the property document.
“Did you know about the apartment?”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“Where did you get that?”
“Did you know,” I said again, turning back to Eleanor, “that he used our joint emergency account to buy an apartment with her?”
Eleanor’s eyes moved to the document.
Something shifted in her face.
Not guilt exactly.
More like the specific discomfort of a person who had known one thing and was now discovering there had been more.
“You knew about Cassandra,” I said.
“But you didn’t know about the money.”
Nathan stepped forward.
His voice dropped.
“Put that away.
Right now.”
“Or what?”
He glanced around at the nearby groups of graduates and families.
“Or we handle this like adults, privately, and not in the middle of my graduation.”
“Your graduation,” I said.
“That I paid for.”
“You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Nathan.” Eleanor’s voice came out sharper than I expected.
She was still looking at the property document.
“How much was in that account?”
He turned to her.
“Mom, this isn’t—”
“How much?”
The silence between them was a different kind of silence than the one between Nathan and me.
This one had edges.
“Fourteen thousand,” I said.
“Give or take.
I can show you the withdrawal records if you’d like.
They’re on the next page.”
Eleanor took the document from my hand before Nathan could stop her.
He reached for it.
“Mom—”
She turned slightly away from him, reading.
A few feet behind Nathan, I could see Cassandra watching from beside a stone pillar.
