“A thief?” She goes back to slumping over the counter. “In what regard am I a thief, might I ask?”

“The time you brought sunflowers to my new apartment after Decker died.”

“Yeah, and? I remember that bouquet well. Arranged it with pops of white ranunculus.”

Is she really making me spell this out for her right now?

“You stole transfer paperwork from Decker’s policy box and forged my signature on a ten-thousand-dollar withdrawal. Ring a bell?”

“You’ve damn near lost your mind, Charlotte. Do you think Kurt and I would ever need a loan from our son’s life insurance policy? Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Look around this place, will you? We’re doing quite alright for ourselves.”

“You gave it to Gemma.”

“Gave what to Gemma?”

“Hush money you didn’t want traced back to your own bank account. She mentioned it.”

“Well, if she mentioned it, I guess that hush money isn’t working so well, huh? I don’t mean to be rude, but if Gemma needed fifty thousand dollars, we could—and would—give it to her. But there was no hush money. Gemma is not like that. She has never been about money.”

The way Debbie talks about Gemma, it’s like she must know her—well. Better than me, I wonder? Are the two of them closer than I ever was to my own mother-in-law? I can feel my facial expressions lose elasticity and she must be able to tell that I am sinking, too.

She puts her hand on my shoulder and says, “Why don’t we continue this chat in the living room. Okay?”

Continue this chat? I want to leave. I want to surrender to a massive panic attack. I want to give up on everything. But alas, I can’t go just yet because if Debbie is inviting me to take a seat in the living room, there’s more to this story.

Debbie flips her blond hair over her shoulder and sits down next to me on the sofa in the living room. Normally she opts to put some distance between us and takes the seat across from me. I wonder what this closeness is all about.

“Now, I have no idea what happened to your money, but I can call Kurt’s personal finance attorney right now if you think that’ll help,” she says, what I determine to be one of the first and only times she’s actually been genuine to me. “Would that help you, Charlotte?”

“What would really help me right now...is if you just say it. I want to hear someone just say it out loud. Say it loud and clear. ‘Decker has a son.’ I mean, doesn’t he?”

I look to Debbie and she nods.

“So then just say it, please.”

She lets out another big breath. “Decker has a son. Aiden Michael Sutherland is his biological child,” she says, finally corroborating the story like I requested. “That’s him on the diving board with the long hair.”

Debbie is a cold woman, but after she points him out, she puts her arm around me. I’m not sure if it’s a sign of affection or an attempt to stabilize me after she drops the truth bomb. But like a rock hitting a windshield, I begin to crack and split. I begin to cry.