The party ended after that. Obviously.
People left fast. Without saying goodbye. Pulling their coats on in silence. A few of them stopped to squeeze my hand on the way out. Clara’s best friend, Pamela, put her hand on my arm and whispered, “I’m so sorry, honey. I had no idea.”
Ryan’s sister, Brooke, hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“I always knew she was awful to you,” Brooke said into my hair. “I always knew. I should have said something too.”
The string quartet packed up. The waiters started clearing the tables. The three-tier cake sat untouched on the head table.
40 YEARS — CLARA & PHILIP — FOREVER UNDER THE STARS.
Philip was sitting alone at the head table. In front of the cake. With his face in his hands.
I went over and sat down next to him.
Ryan stayed back. He knew.
Philip didn’t look up for a long time.
“Jenna,” he said finally. “I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have known.”
He lifted his head. His eyes were red.
“Forty years. I should have known my own wife. I should have looked at the bills. I should have asked where the money for this party was really coming from. I should have stopped her from talking to you the way she did.”
He shook his head.
“I heard it. Every time. Every Sunday. And I never said anything either.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll pay you back,” Philip said. “Every penny. I don’t know how. I don’t have much left. But I’ll find a way.”
“The credit card companies are already removing the charges,” I said. “Because of the fraud report. I’m not liable for them.”
“Then who is?”
I looked at him.
“Clara,” I said quietly.
Philip closed his eyes.
“Can I tell you something?” he said after a long time.
“Of course.”
“Clara’s mother,” he said. “Evelyn. She was a beauty queen. Miss Texas, 1958. She put Clara on her first diet when Clara was eight years old.”
I went very still.
“Eight,” Philip said. “Clara told me once. Early in our marriage. Her mother used to weigh her every morning. On a scale in the bathroom. Before breakfast. If she gained a pound, she didn’t get breakfast. Just black coffee. At eight years old.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
“Her mother told her she’d never get a husband unless she stayed thin,” Philip said. “She told her that her body was the only thing she had to offer. That if she got fat, she’d be worthless. That men only wanted one kind of woman.”
He looked at the cake.
“Clara’s been a size two her whole life,” he said. “She’s never eaten dessert. Not once in forty years. Not at our wedding. Not on her birthday. Not tonight. She ordered this cake for the guests. She won’t touch it.”
He looked at me.
“I’m not making excuses for her,” he said. “What she did to you is unforgivable. What she said to you. What she stole from you. But I think…”
He stopped.
“I think when she looks at you, she sees everything her mother told her she’d become if she ever let go. And it terrifies her.”
I didn’t say anything for a long time.
I thought about Clara at eight years old. Standing on a scale in a bathroom. Getting black coffee instead of breakfast.
I thought about her at sixty-four. In a silver sequined gown. Being led out of her own anniversary party in handcuffs.
I wasn’t always like this.
I thought about Hazel. Five months old. Asleep in her crib.
“That’s why she said it,” I said slowly. “The dress. ‘Now you’ll finally have some motivation.’ That’s what her mother said to her. Isn’t it?”
Philip nodded.
“Word for word,” he said. “Clara told me. Her mother bought her a dress two sizes too small for her sixteenth birthday party. And said, ‘Now you’ll have some motivation.’”
Clara was released on bail the next morning.
Philip paid it with money he borrowed from Roger Haines.
She didn’t call me. I didn’t call her.
Ryan didn’t speak to her for six weeks.
The case moved slowly. Like Detective Shah said.
The district attorney’s office charged Clara with felony identity theft and credit card abuse. There was the sixty-six thousand, five hundred dollars we’d first discovered. The eighteen-thousand-dollar charge at Le Château that was declined. The twelve-thousand-dollar deposit.
Those amounts alone came to ninety-six thousand, five hundred dollars in charges and attempted charges.
In my name.
The prosecutor, a young man named Marcus Bell, called me in November.
“Mrs. Ward,” he said. “Your mother-in-law’s attorney has approached us about a plea agreement. She’d plead guilty to one count of identity theft. Full restitution. Probation. Community service. No jail time.”
“Is that normal?”
“For a first offense, with full restitution, at her age? Yes.”
He paused.
“But it’s your decision too. You’re the victim. If you want us to take it to trial, we will. She could get up to ten years.”
I thought about it.
I thought about it for three days.
I thought about Clara in a prison jumpsuit. Sixty-four years old. In a cell.
I thought about Ryan. About Philip. About Hazel growing up with a grandmother in prison.
I thought about a little girl on a scale in a bathroom.
“I’ll agree to the plea,” I told Marcus Bell. “On one condition.”
The condition was therapy.
Not anger management. Not a class. Real therapy. With a real therapist who specializes in eating disorders and body image. Once a week. For two years. As a condition of her probation.
Marcus Bell was quiet on the phone for a long time.
“That’s unusual,” he said finally.
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because she didn’t start out like this,” I said. “Somebody did this to her. A long time ago. When she was eight. And she’s been carrying it her whole life. And she’s been trying to put it on me.”
I took a breath.
“And I have a daughter. And I don’t want Clara to put it on her too.”
Marcus Bell didn’t say anything for a while.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Clara signed the plea agreement in December.
Guilty. One count of identity theft. Ninety-six thousand dollars in restitution. Three years of probation. Two hundred hours of community service.
And weekly therapy with a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in disordered eating. For two years.
Philip sold the house in University Park to pay the restitution. The big house with the columns and the fountain and the pool nobody swam in. They moved into a two-bedroom condo in Richardson.
Clara sold her jewelry. Her furs. Her designer gowns. Including the silver sequined one.
The money went to me. Every penny.
I cleared up the last of the damage to my credit. And in February, Ryan and I went back to Priya at the bank in Uptown.
My credit score was 776.
We were approved.
We bought a little house in Lake Highlands. Three bedrooms. Two baths. A backyard with a live oak tree. A real nursery for Hazel, with yellow walls and a window seat.
We moved in on March first.
Hazel was ten months old. She’d just learned to crawl. She crawled across every room of that empty house like she was inspecting it.
Ryan sat on the floor of the empty living room with his back against the wall and watched her.
“We did it,” he said. “We actually did it.”
“We did,” I said.
He looked up at me.
“I called my mom yesterday,” he said.
I sat down on the floor next to him.
“How was it?”
“Weird,” he said. “Quiet. She asked about Hazel. She asked about the house.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“She said she’s been going to therapy. Every Tuesday. She said it’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.”
“Did she say anything else?”
Ryan looked down at his hands.
“She asked if she could see you,” he said. “Not me. You. Alone. She said there’s something she needs to say.”
