Chapter 1 - The Potato Patch
The first thing Clara Bennett noticed that Saturday morning was the smell of coffee burning in the pot. The second was the silence from the bedroom she shared with Jason, a silence that had become as familiar as the ticking clock above the kitchen doorway.
She stood at the counter in her Austin kitchen, still wearing the gray robe she had bought at a pharmacy three winters earlier, and opened the school payment portal on her laptop. Leo’s tuition installment was due Monday. Maya’s science camp fee was due Wednesday. The numbers sat in neat blue boxes, waiting for her to move money from one account to another.
“You’re doing it again,” Jason said from the doorway.
Clara looked over her shoulder. “Doing what?”
“Starting the day with spreadsheets.” He poured coffee into a travel mug. “It’s Saturday, Clare.”
“The school doesn’t recognize weekends.”
Jason smiled, but there was no warmth in it. He was forty-one, broad-shouldered, and handsome in the way men often remained handsome when they had stopped taking responsibility for themselves. At the car lot, he sold enough vehicles to keep his commission checks respectable. Respectable, however, did not pay the mortgage, insurance, groceries, utilities, or two private-school tuitions.
Clara closed the laptop. “Did you pack the tools for the cabin?”
“I thought you were handling that.”
“You said you would load the mower.”
“I said I’d look at the mower.”
From the hallway, twelve-year-old Leo called, “Mom, where are my work gloves?”
“Laundry room, second shelf!” Clara called back.
Ten-year-old Maya appeared beside him with a straw hat too large for her head. “Do we really have to dig up potatoes all weekend?”
“The old rows need clearing before the rain,” Clara said. “Granddad planted them years ago. We can make it a project.”
Jason snorted. “A project. That’s one word for spending two days sweating behind a cabin while the rest of us enjoy an actual vacation.”
Clara turned toward him. “The rest of us?”
“Mom and Chloe are coming with us.”
The kitchen seemed to contract around her. “Coming where?”
Jason lifted his mug. “Cancún. We leave Thursday. One week.”
Maya’s face brightened. “The beach?”
“The beach,” Jason said. “Pool, ocean, room service. Your mother can play pioneer in the dirt with you two.”
Leo stared at him. “You’re not coming to the cabin?”
“Your mother wanted the cabin.”
Clara felt the familiar pressure behind her ribs, the sensation of a door being closed while she was still standing in the room. “I wanted a family weekend.”
“You always say that until it involves doing anything fun.”
Evelyn arrived twenty minutes later without knocking. At sixty-eight, Jason’s mother had perfected the expression of a woman disappointed by someone else’s boundaries. Chloe followed with a roller bag and sunglasses pushed into her blond hair.
“There she is,” Evelyn said. “Our hardworking girl.”
“Morning, Evelyn.”
Evelyn kissed the children and glanced at the laptop. “Still managing the money?”
“Paying bills.”
“A good wife should support her husband’s family,” Evelyn said, as if quoting scripture. “Especially when her husband is finally getting a chance to relax.”
Clara looked at Jason. “Finally?”
“Don’t start,” he said.
Chloe wheeled her suitcase toward the door. “Jason says the resort is incredible. Ocean view, swim-up bar, private shuttle. I’ve never done anything like this.”
“Neither have I,” Clara said.
“You don’t even like margaritas,” Jason replied.
She wanted to ask who was paying. Instead, she looked at the children. Leo had gone quiet. Maya was tracing a crack in the countertop with one finger.
At the cabin that afternoon, the air smelled of pine and wet earth. Clara handed Leo a rake and Maya a basket for stones. The old potato patch lay behind the cabin, overgrown with grass and thorny weeds. Jason had once promised to restore it with her. That promise, like most of his promises, had been postponed until it disappeared.
“Dad really gets to go to Mexico?” Maya asked.
“Cancún,” Leo corrected.
“Yes.” Clara pulled on her gloves. “He’ll be back before school starts.”
“He said we’re boring.”
“Your father says careless things when he wants to avoid feeling guilty.”
Leo looked at her. “Are you mad?”
Clara forced a smile. “I’m thinking.”
That night, after the children fell asleep, she drove back to Austin for supplies. Jason’s car was gone, but the house was unlocked. On her way to the office, she noticed the small drawer beneath the printer hanging open.
The emergency credit card had always been kept there, inside a locked metal box. Clara opened the box. The card was missing.
She searched the house, then stopped in the bedroom doorway. Jason’s suitcase was open. Beneath a folded shirt sat a black notebook with a red elastic band.
Clara did not touch it at first. Then she saw the corner of a page filled with numbers she knew by heart: her card number, expiration date, and security code.
May you like
On the next page, Jason had written the name of a luxury resort in Cancún and a total that made Clara’s stomach turn.
The amount was nearly seven thousand dollars, and the reservation had been made in her name.
