Chapter 2 - Paper Castles
The house was completely dark by eleven.
I sat at the kitchen island with my laptop open, the blue glare illuminating the grain of the quartz countertop. Spread around me were the printed statements from the joint household account dating back to March, alongside my own private credit statements.
On September 18—four days before Micah’s birthday—a transfer of nine hundred dollars had moved from our joint household checking into Wes’s personal account. The memo line read simply: *Reimbursement.*
I pulled up our shared spreadsheet. There was no nine-hundred-dollar expense listed for September. No plumbing repairs. No registration renewals.
I looked at the cardboard castle resting in the corner of the living room. Piper’s father had passed away when she was fourteen months old; she had no memory of him, only pictures in silver frames and a little girl’s fierce hunger for a complete family. She had spent all week painting that castle pink and blue, telling me, *Wes is going to be the king, and Micah is the knight.*
I pushed the chair back and walked softly down the hallway.
The door to Micah’s room was cracked an inch. A faint sliver of light pooled on the hardwood floor. I raised my hand to knock, hesitated, and then gently pushed it open.
Micah was sitting upright in his bed, his knees pulled up to his chest, staring at a sketchbook on his lap. He had headphones looped around his neck, the tinny sound of video game music leaking from the foam cups.
When he saw me, he flinched. He pulled the blanket up over the sketchbook as if he had been caught doing something forbidden.
“It’s just me,” I said softly.
He didn't move. His room was the smallest in the house, wedged between the laundry room and Gavin’s room. On the wall hung a faded poster of the solar system and a corkboard pinned with pencil drawings of mechs and dragons.
“Can I sit down?” I asked.
He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
I sat on the edge of the mattress, careful not to crowd him. Up close, I could see that his eyes were red-rimmed.
“I didn't know about September twenty-second,” I told him, keeping my voice very quiet. “I want you to hear me say that. If I had known your dad didn't plan anything, I would have thrown you a party myself. I would have taken you anywhere you wanted to go.”
Micah picked at a loose thread on his quilt. “Dad said you were stressed about the bills.”
“Your dad lied, Micah.”
The word hung in the room like a struck bell. In modern parenting, you are supposed to protect children from their parents’ faults; you are supposed to preserve the illusion of maternal and paternal competence. But Wes had already shattered the illusion by using a five-year-old child as his shield. I refused to let Micah carry the guilt of being an unwanted burden.
“I didn’t spend your birthday money,” I said. “And Piper didn’t, either. Your dad has money problems that belong to him, not to you, and not to us.”
“Brynn said he owes child support to Mom,” Micah whispered. His voice was cracked, raw. “She found a letter in his glove box.”
A cold prickle ran down my neck. “To your mother?”
“He hasn’t paid her since June,” Micah said. “Mom called Brynn last week crying about the dentist bill. That’s why Brynn went crazy today. She saw the balloons and the cake and she just... she said it wasn't fair that you and Piper got everything while Mom was drowning.”
I stared at the boy. Wes’s ex-wife, Claire, lived in San Antonio. When Wes and I married, he had assured me that all custody arrangements and support orders had been formalized and automated through the state disbursement unit. He had shown me a decree from two years prior.
*He hasn’t paid since June.*
“What did you want for your birthday, Micah?” I asked softly.
He looked down at his blanket. “Just the go-karts. Dad promised we’d do the two-hour unlimited pass at the track on I-35. It was sixty bucks.”
Sixty dollars.
A nine-hundred-dollar withdrawal from our joint account four days prior, and Wes had told his youngest son that sixty dollars was an impossible luxury because Piper Ellis needed a cardboard castle.
“Get your shoes on,” I said.
Micah blinked at me. “What?”
“Get your sneakers on. And grab a hoodie.”
May you like
“It’s midnight.”
“I know what time it is,” I said, standing up. “Come on.”
