CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SYLVIA
Walter was home, working in his study, but Sylvia marched in and placed two stacks of cash firmly on his desk, then sat in the brown leather chair opposite him and waited.
“I have to go,” Walter said into his phone. “We’ll talk more about this later.” He hung up.
“I’ve pawned my jewelry and I’ve sold my car,” Sylvia said, not waiting for him to speak.
“What? Why would you do that?”
She looked at him incredulously. “What else am I supposed to do, Walter? Sit around and wait for you to destroy our lives even more?” She hated this. She hated the anger and resentment she felt toward the man she had loved for seventeen years. How immediate her reaction had been when he revealed what he’d done; how sudden her feelings toward him had changed from love, desire, and respect to utter disdain. She wondered if she’d ever be able to reverse her outrage and if she and Walter could ever return to their old selves, even if they dug themselves out of this mess.
“That”—he pointed to the stacks of cash wearily—“that’s not even going to make a difference, Sylvia. I don’t think you realize how much debt we’re in.”
“I realize. We are sixty thousand dollars in debt; you made that very clear. But this is better than nothing, surely. Give them this and tell them we need more time to come up with the rest.”
Walter shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way.” He tried to reach across the desk for Sylvia’s hand, but she pulled it away. He sat up in his chair, looking dejected and hurt. “They’re charging interest. Weekly interest. They want their money and they want it now.” Walter paused, then lowered his voice. “We have to sell the house, fast. We’re going to have to take what we can get for it; we can’t wait for the right buyer to come along, or this debt is going to double in no time and cripple us. We really will lose everything. I’ve already spoken to Teddy, and he knows a family that’s looking to buy right away, cash.”
Sylvia put her hand to her mouth as she felt her stomach churn. She wanted to get up and storm out of this room, leaving behind all these awful, terrible things Walter was saying about their home, about their life. But this was real. Walking out wasn’t going to make this go away, so she closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying to make sense of it all.
So, he had been talking to Teddy about selling the house, and now she wondered if Teddy’s wife Faye knew about Walter’s gambling problems before she did. He’d worked with Walter on several of his property acquisitions, but she never imagined having to ask for his help to sell their home. She took tremendous pride in what they had built. Their house was decorated with love for her family, exactly to her taste, filled with trinkets, mementos from their happy life. At this moment, a funny little buffalo statue smiled up at her from Walter’s desk, a souvenir she had insisted she buy for him on their last trip to Catalina. She felt safe at home, here, surrounded by her favorite people and things. She’d always imagined they’d live in this house for the rest of their lives, and when they were gone, they’d pass it down to their daughter. A tear dropped involuntarily to her cheek and she quickly wiped it away. “But Judith. She was born here, she’s grown up here; everything she knows and loves is on this island.”
Walter walked around to Sylvia, moved the statue aside, and sat on the desk in front of her. “You’ve grown up here too,” he said in a whisper. “And I am so sorry. I made a stupid, stupid mistake.”
For a moment, Sylvia saw a flash of forgiveness far, far in the corner of her mind, and though she wasn’t ready, not even close to being able to forgive him, she felt a glimmer of hope that she’d find it in herself someday. But then her mind snapped back to the present; anger and fear swallowed her whole.
“Where will we live?” she demanded, panicking about what he had in mind. “I refuse to go to the desert. Barstow was bad enough, and I left there long ago with no plans to return.”
“We can stay on the island for now,” Walter said. “We can move into the property on Onyx Avenue.”
“That place? It’s a dump, Walter, we’re about to tear it down and rebuild.”
“Well, that’s obviously not happening now.”
“Why can’t we sell that instead?” Sylvia asked, though she knew the answer.
“We’ll get barely anything for it in the state it’s in. But we can stay there temporarily; we can make it decent. We can bring some of our furniture, a few of the smaller pieces, until we figure out what’s next.”
“And live next door to Adele Lambert?”
“I heard you hired her at the club.”
Sylvia shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about that. The humiliation of moving out of their house and into that tiny cottage next to Adele would be all-consuming. What would everyone say? They’d all be talking behind Sylvia’s back, making assumptions about what happened. It wouldn’t take long for them to all find out what Walter had done. Usually her husband was her confidant, the one she talked through all her worries with, big and small. How strange that she could barely be in the same room with him now. She had no one she could confide in, and it was unbearable carrying all these secrets alone.
“Someone was watching me at our party on Sunday,” Sylvia said.“There was a man out on the dock. At first I thought he was one of your friends, but he never came into the party.”
“I know,” Walter nodded. “I saw him too. They’re keeping an eye on us.”
“So they’re following us now?” She shook her head, horrified. “You know, Judith’s planning on going to the Rendezvous this week. There are going to be hundreds of people there for Bal Week. Anyone could approach her.”
“They won’t do anything, so long as they get their money.”
“And if they don’t?”
“That’s not an option,” he said grimly.
“Well, I’m not going to let her go alone. I’ve had a bad feeling ever since the party, so I’ve asked Milly Kincaid to tag along with me.”
