The following morning, I woke before Nick.
For a few seconds, I forgot what had happened.
Then I saw the notebook on the dresser.
I remembered the credit card.
I remembered the missing money.
And I remembered the way Nick had looked when Tara's recorded explanation ended.
I got dressed for work.
The new scrubs fit comfortably, and I was grateful for them.
Elaine had bought them without making me feel that I owed her an explanation.
I thought about calling her to thank her again.
Instead, I sent a short message before leaving the house.
I told her the clothes were exactly what I needed and that I appreciated everything she had done.
She replied that she was glad I had what I needed for work.
I put my phone away.
Then I checked the closet one last time.
The sage green dress was still hanging there.
I left for the hospital with my mind full of questions.
During my shift, I tried to concentrate on my patients.
I checked medication orders.
I answered call bells.
I listened carefully when people spoke to me, even when I was tired.
But between tasks, I kept thinking about the money.
I thought about the credit card balance and the checking account.
I thought about the bills we had planned to pay before Nora arrived.
I wondered whether the money I had set aside for maternity leave was still where I believed it was.
That was the question I couldn't put aside.
I had saved because I knew my income would change.
I had planned to take time off without receiving my usual paycheck.
I had tried to make sure that our family could manage while I recovered from childbirth and cared for our daughter.
If Nick had been using our checking account to make wagers, I needed to know how much of that plan was still possible.
I couldn't keep working through the uncertainty by telling myself that perhaps the damage wasn't too serious.
I needed the numbers.
When I returned home, Nick was at the kitchen table.
His phone was beside the notebook.
Several pages of notes lay in front of him.
He looked tired.
"I went through the transactions."
I put my bag down.
"What did you find?"
He moved the notebook toward me.
He had written down the credit card balance and listed the transactions he believed were connected to the wagers.
He had also started separating those transactions from ordinary household spending.
I sat down and began reading.
Some entries were familiar.
Others were not.
He explained what he could.
When I asked about a transaction he couldn't identify, he marked it for further review.
I appreciated that he had done some of the work.
I wasn't ready to praise him for it.
Reviewing the money was something he should have done before the situation reached this point.
Still, I needed to know what he had found.
I asked whether the amount on the credit card included everything he owed.
He said it reflected the balance on that card.
I asked whether there were any other credit cards he had not told me about.
He said there weren't.
I asked him to be certain.
He repeated that the card we had discussed was the hidden one.
I didn't have a way to know whether that answer was complete.
For the moment, I wrote it down as what he had told me.
Then we looked at the checking account.
He showed me the transactions he had identified as money used for the wagers.
The amounts were spread across the months since spring.
I traced the dates with my finger.
There were weeks when I had been picking up extra shifts.
There were days when I had come home exhausted and told him I was worried about our budget.
I remembered asking whether we could afford a particular baby item.
He had told me we should be careful.
I had taken that as a sign that we were both being responsible.
Now I wondered whether he had been telling me to be careful with my spending while continuing to risk our money elsewhere.
"Did you know how much you had already lost when I bought the maternity clothes?" I asked.
He looked at the page.
"Some of it."
"How much?"
"I can't remember exactly."
I felt my jaw tighten.
"You need to stop answering every question as if remembering isn't your responsibility."
He looked at me.
I could see that he wanted to defend himself.
Then he looked down again.
"You're right."
I wasn't sure whether hearing those words made me feel better.
They were true.
But they didn't return the money.
They didn't restore the months when I had trusted him without knowing what he was doing.
And they didn't change the fact that he had turned my belongings into cash to cover a payment.
I asked him to explain the payment due Monday.
He said he had been worried about missing it.
I asked whether that was why he had asked Tara for half the money from the clothing sales.
He nodded.
"Yes."
I stared at the page.
The number three hundred and ten was written near the bottom.
I touched it with my finger.
"Do you understand how small that amount is compared with what you owe?"
He nodded again.
"Then why would you risk all this for it?"
He rubbed his face.
"I was trying to keep the account from falling further behind."
That answer made me angry.
He had created a problem that was much larger than the payment he was trying to make.
Then he had used my belongings to deal with the immediate pressure without telling me why he needed the money.
I looked at him.
"You could have told me the card existed."
"I know."
"You could have told me you were losing money."
"I know."
"You could have stopped before you took money from our checking account."
He closed his eyes.
"I know."
I stopped speaking.
I didn't want to keep listing the obvious.
He had heard me.
Whether he was willing to change was something I still had to find out.
We spent the next hour reviewing the figures.
I asked questions.
He answered some.
Others remained unresolved.
I didn't try to force a conclusion before we had enough information.
When we finished, I took the notebook and went through our planned expenses for the baby.
I had a list of the things we still needed.
There were basic supplies.
There were household bills.
There were costs I had expected to cover while I was on leave.
I looked at the list and realized that I couldn't continue using our old budget as if nothing had happened.
The money we had once counted on might not be available.
We needed a clear picture of what remained and what we owed before making further plans.
I told Nick that.
He agreed.
I asked him to stop making any more wagers.
He said he would.
I wanted to believe him.
But a promise made after being caught was not the same as a history of honest behavior.
I needed to see what he did next.
That evening, I sat on the bed and sorted the recovered maternity clothes.
I placed the work scrubs together.
I folded the comfortable shirts.
I put the pants in the drawer.
The green dress stayed on its hanger.
As I worked, I remembered how I had first discovered the empty closet.
I had thought someone had made a thoughtless decision.
Then I had believed the problem was Tara's choice to sell what she had been given.
Now I understood that Nick had been hiding a financial problem for months.
The missing clothes had exposed it because he had been desperate enough to turn something I owned into money.
I didn't know whether he had ever intended to tell me.
I asked myself that question while folding the last shirt.
If Tara hadn't sold the dress online, would I have found out?
If Elaine hadn't confronted her, would Nick have admitted that he had a hidden credit card?
If I had accepted his first explanation and stopped asking questions, how long would I have continued believing our finances were under control?
I had no answers.
I only knew I could no longer rely on silence as a sign that everything was fine.
Before bed, I placed the notebook in the drawer beside the receipts.
The two things had once represented ordinary planning.
Now they held a record of what I needed to understand before I could make any decisions about our future.
I turned off the light.
Nick was quiet beside me.
I thought about Nora and the life I wanted her to enter.
I didn't need a perfect home.
I didn't need every purchase to go according to plan.
I needed honesty.
And for the first time in our marriage, I understood that I couldn't build financial security for our family by myself while pretending we were doing it together.
Click here to continue reading: PART 8: I Could Replace the Clothes and Recover the Money From Their Sale, but I Couldn’t Pretend Our Marriage Was Still Safe
I Came Home From a Hospital Shift Expecting to Rest, but the Empty Closet Made Me Question My Own Marriage
Part 7 of 12
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