Elaine didn't tell me everything in the first few seconds.
She asked whether I was somewhere I could sit down.
I was standing near the kitchen counter, one hand resting on the back of a chair.
I pulled the chair out and sat.
"What happened?"
"I spoke to Tara."
I waited.
Elaine told me she had gone to her daughter's apartment that morning and asked her to explain why my clothes were being sold online.
Tara had tried to defend herself at first.
She had said she was in a difficult position.
She had explained that she was pregnant and that her boyfriend was no longer there to help her.
Elaine had listened.
Then she had asked a question that left Tara with very little room to hide.
"Did you ask for those clothes, or did Nick give them to you?"
According to Elaine, Tara admitted that Nick had brought the clothes to her.
He had told her I wanted to clear out my closet.
He had made it sound as though I was finished with the maternity items and had no objection to letting them go.
I stared at the kitchen table.
I had never said anything like that.
Not once.
I had spent months putting those clothes together because I knew I would need them.
The idea that Nick had told Tara I wanted to get rid of them made me feel foolish for having trusted his judgment about anything involving our family.
Elaine continued.
She had asked Tara why she had started selling the clothes rather than keeping them for herself.
Tara admitted that she had sold five items.
Five.
I thought about the empty hangers again.
I thought about the scrubs I had expected to wear on my next shift.
I thought about the green dress, already gone to someone I didn't know.
"How much did she get?" I asked.
"Three hundred and ten dollars."
I closed my eyes.
The number was smaller than the amount I had spent.
It was also large enough to matter.
Three hundred and ten dollars could cover groceries for a while.
It could pay a bill.
It could buy supplies for Nora.
Instead, it had come from selling things I had bought for my own pregnancy.
I asked Elaine whether Tara still had the remaining clothes.
She said she had demanded that Tara gather everything she hadn't sold and return it.
Tara had agreed.
I felt a brief sense of relief.
Then Elaine told me the part I hadn't expected.
Nick had asked Tara for half the money.
I didn't speak.
I heard Elaine take a breath on the other end of the call.
"She said he wanted half of what she made."
I looked at the wall.
"For what?"
"He told her he needed to make a credit card payment by Monday."
I couldn't seem to connect the words to Nick.
A credit card payment.
By Monday.
I knew we had ordinary household expenses.
I knew we both had financial responsibilities.
But I hadn't known he was desperate for money, and I certainly hadn't known that he had arranged for my clothes to be sold so he could get some of it.
I asked Elaine to repeat what she had said.
She did.
Nick had not simply given away my belongings because he wanted to help his sister.
He had told Tara what to do with them.
He had encouraged her to sell the expensive pieces first.
And he had expected a share of the proceeds.
I sat there, holding the phone so tightly that my fingers began to hurt.
The green dress had been the first thing I noticed.
Now it seemed like only the most visible part of something much worse.
I tried to find a reason that would make the story less ugly.
Maybe Tara had misunderstood.
Maybe Nick had asked for the money for something we both needed.
Maybe the credit card was one of the accounts we had discussed and I had forgotten the details.
But none of those possibilities explained why he had taken my clothes without telling me.
None explained why he had let me believe Tara was simply borrowing them.
And none explained why he had watched me become upset while keeping the truth to himself.
"What did Tara say about the money?" I asked.
"She gave me what she still had."
Elaine told me Tara had acknowledged that she shouldn't have sold my belongings without permission.
She had also agreed to return the clothes that remained in her apartment.
Elaine said Tara had written an apology.
I didn't know how I felt about that.
Part of me was angry with her.
Another part recognized that Nick had given her a version of events that made the situation seem different from what it was.
That didn't excuse selling the clothes.
But it did mean he had involved both of us in a lie.
He had taken something from me.
Then he had used his sister to turn it into money.
I thanked Elaine for going to see her.
She told me not to worry about the clothes for the moment.
She said she and Frank would bring over what they had recovered.
I asked whether Tara had explained anything else.
Elaine paused.
"She told me Nick was very specific about which items she should sell."
The words settled heavily in my mind.
He hadn't simply handed over a pile of clothes and walked away.
He had apparently thought about which pieces would bring in more money.
I remembered how carefully I had chosen the green dress.
I remembered comparing prices before buying it.
I remembered telling Nick that I wanted something simple for the photographs.
He had been sitting beside me when I showed it to him.
He knew what it meant to me.
Or at least, he knew I had wanted it.
I thanked Elaine again and ended the call.
For several minutes, I didn't move.
Then I stood and walked into the bedroom.
The closet looked just as empty as it had the day before.
I counted the hangers again, though I knew the number wouldn't change.
I began thinking about the credit card.
Nick had never told me about a payment that was urgent enough to require money from selling my belongings.
We had a checking account we both used for household expenses.
We discussed bills.
We talked about the cost of preparing for Nora.
I had believed we were planning our finances together.
If he was struggling to make a payment, why hadn't he told me?
I could have looked at the budget.
We could have reviewed our expenses.
We could have decided what needed to be paid first.
There were ways to handle a money problem without stealing from your pregnant wife.
I returned to the kitchen.
Nick was still there, looking at his phone.
He glanced up when I entered.
"What's wrong now?"
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because he had somehow managed to make me feel as if I were the one creating trouble simply by asking questions.
"Your mother spoke to Tara."
His face changed.
Only slightly.
His thumb stopped moving across the screen.
"What did she say?"
"That Tara sold five things for three hundred and ten dollars."
He put the phone down.
"Why is my mother getting involved in this?"
"Because you gave away my clothes without asking me."
"She doesn't need to get involved in everything."
I looked at him.
"Did you ask Tara for half the money?"
He didn't answer.
I waited.
His eyes moved toward the counter, then back to me.
"She told you that?"
"So it's true."
He leaned back in his chair.
"She offered to help."
I felt my stomach tighten.
"She sold my clothes, Nick. What exactly was she helping you with?"
He rubbed his jaw.
"I had a payment coming up."
"On what?"
He looked irritated.
"Just a credit card."
I waited for him to explain which card.
He didn't.
I asked how much the payment was.
He said he had it handled.
I asked why he hadn't told me he needed money.
He said it wasn't a big deal.
Every answer made the next question more necessary.
I was no longer asking about the clothes.
I was asking why my husband had kept something important from me, then arranged for my property to be sold so he could get cash.
"How much do you owe on that card?"
He stood.
"I don't want to do this right now."
"Neither did I want to find my clothes missing."
He walked past me toward the hallway.
I turned to follow him, but stopped after a few steps.
I was tired.
My body was tired, and my mind felt worse.
I knew that if I continued pressing him, he would keep changing the subject until the conversation became another argument about my tone.
I let him go.
But the number Elaine had given me stayed in my thoughts.
Three hundred and ten dollars.
Half of it had been intended for Nick's credit card payment.
That meant he had been waiting for money from the sale of my clothes.
He hadn't merely accepted the money after the fact.
He had asked for it.
I sat at the kitchen table and looked at the small envelope where I kept my receipts.
I had saved every receipt from the maternity purchases because I wanted to know exactly what I had spent.
Now I was glad I had.
I pulled the envelope toward me and began checking the list.
The dress.
The scrubs.
The pants.
The shirts.
I wrote down what was missing and what had been sold, using the information Elaine had given me.
I wasn't sure what I would do with the list yet.
I only knew I needed to keep track of the facts.
I had spent too much time listening to Nick tell me that I was emotional.
I wanted something I could look at without wondering whether I had remembered it incorrectly.
That afternoon, Elaine called once more.
She said she and Frank would come by with the recovered items and some things she had bought for me.
I tried to protest.
I didn't want her spending money because of something Nick had done.
She told me not to argue with her about it.
"You need clothes for work," she said. "That's what matters right now."
I swallowed hard.
I thanked her and promised to be home.
After we hung up, I went back to the closet.
The empty hangers no longer looked like evidence of a family disagreement.
They looked like a record of a decision my husband had made without me.
And I was beginning to understand that the decision had not been about helping Tara.
It had been about money.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: His Parents Arrived With Bags of Clothes, but the Evidence They Brought Left Nick With Nowhere to Hide
I Came Home From a Hospital Shift Expecting to Rest, but the Empty Closet Made Me Question My Own Marriage
Part 3 of 12
