Chapter 2 - THE EXTRA CARD
The card had been Andrew’s idea.
Martha did not have a car anymore, he said.
Martha helped with the kids sometimes.
Martha had health issues.
Martha needed dignity.
Dignity, apparently, meant access to my credit line.
I said no the first time.
Andrew looked wounded.
“She’s my mother, Nora.”
“I know who she is.”
“She raised me alone.”
“And now I’m supposed to finance her groceries, medicine, and whatever else she decides counts as family support?”
He sighed.
The tired sigh.
The one that made me feel like I was making a simple thing cruel.
“She’s not going to abuse it.”
She abused it immediately.
Not hugely at first.
That was how Martha worked.
Small enough to make objection look petty.
A drugstore charge.
A grocery run.
A new coat because winter in Chicago was “hard on her bones.”
Then restaurant lunches.
Salon visits.
A tablet for Ethan because “boys need stimulation.”
Nothing for Sophie.
Never Sophie.
If I asked, Andrew said he would talk to her.
If I complained again, he said I was keeping score.
If I canceled the card, he said, it would humiliate his mother.
That word came up often in our marriage.
Humiliate.
It always meant Martha was about to face a consequence.
It never applied to me.
Or Sophie.
Martha had been living in our orbit since before Sophie was born.
She did not live with us, but she might as well have. She had a key, an opinion about every drawer, and a talent for arriving when Andrew was at work and I was too tired to argue.
She adored Ethan.
Andrew’s eight-year-old son from before our marriage.
I loved Ethan too.
That part mattered.
He was not my stepson in my heart.
He was my boy.
I had been there for lost teeth, nightmares, reading assignments, and the first time he called me Nora instead of “Dad’s wife.”
Sophie adored him.
She followed him everywhere with her giraffe tucked under one arm.
Ethan was patient with her in the careful, overgrown way of children who have learned to be small around adults.
Martha called him “the man of the house” when Andrew was gone.
She called Sophie “dramatic.”
When Ethan spilled juice, Martha laughed and said boys were messy.
When Sophie dropped a spoon, Martha said girls needed manners.
When Ethan wanted seconds, she filled his plate.
When Sophie reached for one cracker from his bowl, Martha pushed her snack away with her foot and called it a lesson.
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That was not discipline.
That was a family belief stepping out of hiding.
