Augustine reached for the bills on the dresser. “Of course.”
Sex workers came into her ER all the time with anything from the problems you would expect to sprains and broken bones from abusive customers to ear infections and tonsillitis, and they brought their kids for the usual childhood complaints. There was one lady of the evening named Melinda Williams, her legal name was David Williams, who had three of the sweetest, cheerfullest,cleanestlittle kids you can imagine. Dree never saw normal childhood dirt on any of those kids.Yes, ma’amandno, ma’amand showing off how well they did in school and pictures from when Melinda chaperoned their school field trips with them, but she couldn’t afford health insurance and so ended up in the ER with them too often.
Dree said to Augustine, “Obviously, you were fine with it. You even knew the going rate.”
He shrugged and put his wallet back in his pocket.
“I mean, Jesus hung out with prostitutes, drunks, and tax collectors, right?”
Augustine reared back for a second, but then recovered. “That’s one interpretation, though I always thought misogynists were trying to smear the reputation of Mary Magdalene to reduce her importance in the New Testament. But that is one interpretation, and one could do worse than to emulate the Son of God, as best one can.”
His frown had turned sad as he stared at his breakfast.
Dree kept thinking about that money.
He finally asked, “You said you’d encountered a problem?”
She didn’t want to admit how stupid she’d been, but she was changing her life. Old-Dree would have hidden what had happened to her out of mortified embarrassment.
But she was trying to be someone else, someone better.
Someone strong enough to be honest, even when she was embarrassed.
Okay, here it went.
She said, “On the day before yesterday—I think it was the day before yesterday. I was on the plane for so long and with all the time zone changes, I don’t know what day I should call it. Anyway, I was on my way home from work after a fifteen-hour shift, and I stopped at a grocery store to buy milk.”
Augustine had set his next croissant on a napkin and was just listening, his dark eyes steadily watching her.
The ease with which he watched her and his open, compassionate expression with the hint of an accepting smile seemed so kind.
She hadn’t thought of him as having kind eyes, but maybe she’d been too busy obsessing about his muscular shoulders or his perfect washboard abs.
Because he totally had those, too.
When he smiled at her like that, she felt more comfortable andheard,somehow.
She went on. “When I went to check out at the store, my debit card was declined.”
Mortification filled her, but she pressed on.
Looking into Augustine’s eyes helped. She felt calmer.
She said, “It was weird. I should have had plenty of money in my checking account. I’d just gotten paid two days before. So, I tried to get money out of the store’s ATM to pay for the milk, but all of my accounts came up overdrawn. The ATM even ate my debit card and wouldn’t give it back. It was like I was inThe Handmaid’s Taleor theTwilight Zone.Nothing that I tried would work. I thought maybe my bank’s computers had gotten hacked or something, and it would be fixed in a few hours. So, I left the store and went home.”
Her heart was knocked around in her chest at telling him this, and she swallowed hard. “I’m boring you. You don’t want to hear all this.”
He leaned forward and said quietly, “I’m listening.”
Dree sighed. “When I walked into my apartment, it wasbare.I mean, there wasnothing.All my furniture, my clothes, my jewelry and computers and kitchen appliances and everything weregone.You could see the marks in the carpeting where my couch and other furniture had been, and some crumbs on the kitchen counter where I needed to clean under my toaster. When I went outside to look, my car was missing, too. Thatreallyfelt like theTwilight Zone.It was like I’d beenerased.”
Augustine nodded. Dree absently noted the way the strong cords of his neck moved under the open collar of his white shirt.
Her hands were fluttering in the air with nerves. “So, I called my boyfriend, Francis, because I was freaked out. I mean, of course I called my boyfriend, right? I thought I’d been robbed and had my identity stolen, or maybe I’d accidentally slipped into another dimension where I didn’t exist. But he started screaming at me that he needed money, and did I have any other credit cards or bank accounts because he needed it all right then.”
Augustine frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t, either.” Her incomprehension had turned to realization and then horror on the plane to Paris. It had been almost a fifteen-hour flight. That was a lot of time to be tied to a seat alone with one’s thoughts. “My boyfriend stole everything from me.Everything.Like, a swindle. A con job. We were together foreleven months.Eleven months is alongtime. We stayed over at each other’s apartments most nights for the last six months. I’ve met his parents and his brother, and we hung out with his friends all the time. I’m not rich. I didn’t have that much to steal. He knew that. We went and met my parents on their sheep ranch. It’sa sheep ranch.It’s not even cattle. It’snothing,and I don’t even own it. He couldn’t get at that. This couldn’t have been a long con, not for almosta year.I mean, withallof it, everything he sold andallmy bank accounts and the money he withdrew from my retirement account—”
