Alison Strobel - The Heart of Memory

THE SOUND OF THE GARAGE DOOR OPENING STARTLED SAVANnah awake. She pushed herself upright on the couch where she’d fallen asleep and checked her watch. 4:15 a.m. What on earth has he been doing all this time?

She stood and straightened her clothes as she psyched herself up for the confrontation. When he walked in and saw her, she knew things would not go well. She tried not to sound as angry as she felt. “Where have you been all night? I was really starting to worry.”

“Honestly? I came home three hours ago and saw you through the window. I didn’t feel like talking. What are you doing home?”

“It sounded like things were getting desperate here. I thought it wise to come back and do what I could to keep them from falling apart.”

He snorted, not even bothering to look her in the eyes. “A day late and a dollar short, darling.”

“Not when it comes to Jessie. Just in time, actually.”

He said nothing and walked away toward his office. She steeled her courage and said, “So what’s the story with Carlie Stone?”

He froze, his back still turned to her. “What did you say?”

“I know everything, Shaun. Carlie, the audit, the fact that you’re doing something with the ministry’s money.”

He said nothing, and a rock took up residence in Savannah’s chest. What if she’d been horribly wrong? But then his shoulders slumped. His entire frame seemed to deflate. He turned, and his face was filled with grief, his eyes imploring her not to hate him. “I’m sorry, Savannah. God, I am so sorry. I can’t even – “ His voice broke; he covered his eyes with a trembling hand. “I thought I could get everything worked out. I did everything I could think of to shore up A &A and replenish our savings. But everything I tried backfired on me. I never meant to ruin us, I swear.”

He sank into a chair and Savannah followed suit, stunned silent at hearing their personal savings had been affected too. In a trembling voice, Shaun laid out everything that had happened.

It had all started with the letter from the IRS. The first two years A &A had been an official entity, Shaun had done the accounting, teaching himself along the way. Unfortunately, he’d made some very large mistakes on their taxes, and when the government came calling three years later the ministry owed twice as much money as he’d thought they did. Too embarrassed to admit his mistake, he decided not to tell the new accountant, who would have paid the back taxes out of A &A’s savings, which at the time were so meager they wouldn’t have been sufficient anyway. Instead, he had paid the taxes with their personal savings, depositing it into A &A and then pulling it out so it was an official A &A payment.

His plan had been to skim a little here, a little there, and pay back to their savings what he’d used to pay the taxes. He made sure to always maintain some level of access to A &A’s financials, and to keep the amounts small so they wouldn’t be detected. He hired accountants who were green, who were star-stuck with Savannah and had no problem rubber-stamping anything that came from her. He began submitting personal receipts for reimbursement on her forms as a way to collect back what the ministry owed him.

It had worked fine for a while-until they’d hired Carlie Stone. She had been zealous about her job and about the ministry, always looking for ways to help the other staffers when she had free time. She was a hard worker, but there was something off about her-her manic-like energy, the way she violated others’ personal space, her seeming lack of understanding of social cues. She would walk into someone’s cubicle and offer to help, then began doing whatever she thought they wanted done without waiting for their response, even if it meant reading their reports or shuffling through the info cards they were trying to enter. People appreciated the offer of help, but not the way it was executed.

Shaun had left some receipts and a reimbursement form labeled as Savannah’s on his desk before leaving for a meeting. She’d gone in and decided to finish the form for him, and in doing so had noticed some of the receipts were for things Savannah hadn’t purchased-lunch from fast food restaurants (she never ate fast food), office supplies (it was Carlie’s job to order those), magazines and subscriptions (Carlie was pretty sure Savannah didn’t read Forbes Magazine or subscribe to Lebed’s stock picks). She’d gotten suspicious and confronted Shaun, who had denied any wrongdoing and had refused to explain himself to her. He’d let her go soon after citing “personality conflicts” as the reason. A few months later she’d sent her first threat and demand for money.

“I thought if I gave her what she wanted, she’d just go away. I didn’t think she’d keep coming back. But by the time I realized she wasn’t going to stop, I was afraid of what she might say to people, and of whom she might decide to talk to. It would have sounded bad enough had she followed through with her original threat, but then to add to it that I’d been paying her not to talk?”

“So, let me guess,” Savannah said, fighting to keep her voice neutral. “Nick figured out what was going on, too, and that’s why you fired him.”

“He was close. He hadn’t figured it out yet, no; but I was afraid he would. He was more conscientious with your forms than I thought he’d be. I couldn’t take any chances.”

“And then I got sick -”

“And the bills started pouring in.” He reached out a hand to her, a gesture of surrender. “Don’t hate me, Savannah. I was a fool and I know it. Please forgive me.”

Her heart was in turmoil. The anger she’d been happily living without had erupted again during Shaun’s confession. Ten years of her life down the drain because he hadn’t been man enough to admit his mistake. And now they were buried under debt and had no way to pay it off, had no way to pay their mortgage or the electric bill or their daughter’s tuition.

“I… I can’t even begin to talk to you about this right now. It’s so much more than I…” Savannah wanted to punch out a window, she was so angry. “Never mind. I’m going to bed.” She turned to head up the stairs and saw a shadow move in the hall. Oh no. “Jessie?” The shadow stopped. Shaun’s head dropped into his hands. “Jessie, honey, I know you’re there. Come out where I can see you.”

Jessie stepped out of the dark. Savannah could see the tears on her cheeks. Savannah tried to keep her tone even, to not let her anger spill into her conversation with her daughter. “You heard everything, didn’t you?”

“I can’t believe you.” Jessie was looking not back at Savannah, but at Shaun. “You lied to me. You let me think it was all Mom’s fault.” She disappeared down the back stairwell, and a moment later they heard the door to the garage open and slam shut and Jessie’s car rev to life.

Shaun moaned. “I can’t believe she heard me.”

“Well, you’d better go chase her down. I’m not doing your reconciliation for you.” She left and went into the guest bedroom, unwilling to sleep in the space that reminded her so much of him. She shut the door, waited until she saw Shaun’s car swing into the early morning in pursuit of Jessie, then let herself fall apart.

JESSIE POUNDED A FIST ON the steering wheel as another sob broke from her throat. If she’d felt betrayed before by her father’s support of Savannah, hearing that it was actually he who was responsible for A &A’s downfall and their family’s descent into near-bankruptcy made her feel like she’d been knifed in the chest. He was a coward, a liar, a thief. Her family tree was rotten to the core. She felt doomed.

Driving on autopilot, she soon found herself on the empty lanes of I-25, the major highway that bisected the state. She took it north, deciding to go to Angie’s, then almost immediately changing her mind as she realized what time it was. Angie was in the throes of midterms just as she would be if she were still in school; to wake her before dawn with Jessie’s family drama would be unfair. She couldn’t do anything to help anyway. Instead, she took the exit for the 105 into Monument and drove to Angie’s parents’ house.