The first of every month had become routine until the morning I learned I’d been paying for a life my stepdaughter wasn’t living.
I was in the kitchen Tom had remodeled with his own hands, wearing his old sweatshirt and staring at the transfer screen on my laptop.
Amount: $3,000.
Recipient: Hannah.
Reason: Tuition.
I learned I’d been paying for a life my stepdaughter wasn’t living.
Tom’s photograph sat on the windowsill beside the basil plant he’d insisted I couldn’t kill. In it, he had one arm around twelve-year-old Hannah.
Fourteen months earlier, in a hospital room that smelled like rain and antiseptic, Tom had squeezed my hand and whispered, “Take care of Hannah.”
I promised him I would.
So I clicked send.
“Take care of Hannah.”
“There,” I whispered to his picture. “I’m doing it, Tom. I don’t know if I’m doing it well, but I’m doing it.”
$3,000 wasn’t easy money.
Not after the funeral. Not after I refinanced the house, drained most of our savings, and took weekend bookkeeping work to keep Hannah in school.
But Hannah was mine.
Not by blood, but by packed lunches, science fairs, and dance practices where she pretended not to look for me through the window.
“I’m doing it, Tom.”
I’d raised her since she was seven, when she asked me in a tiny voice, “Are you going to leave too?”
I never did.
My phone buzzed before I closed the laptop.
Hannah.
“Got it, Mom,” she said when I answered. “You saved me again.”
That word still loosened something in my chest.
“Are you going to leave too?”
Mom.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said. “How are classes?”
“Oh, awful,” she said, but she laughed. “My thesis proposal is trying to kill me.”
“The one about mothers in old novels?”
“Nineteenth-century novels,” she corrected. “Women trying to survive rules they didn’t make.”
I smiled. “I’m a bookkeeper with a bad knee and a second mortgage. Don’t put me in any novels.”
“How are classes?”
“You’re more heroic than half the women I read about.”
“Are you eating anything besides vending machine pretzels?”
“Yes, Ruby.”
“Don’t Ruby me. I earned Mom.”
“You did,” she said quickly. “You really did.”
Then she added, “Dad would be proud of you.”
“You’re more heroic.”
I looked at Tom’s picture.
“I hope so.”
“He would,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Four days later, the dean called while I was pouring coffee.
“Ruby?” he asked. “This is Dean Morrison from the university. You’re listed as Hannah’s emergency contact and payer. I’m calling about her enrollment status.”
“I love you.”
My hand froze around the pot. “Okay. What about it?”
“I need to know if Hannah plans to return this semester.”
I laughed because the sentence made no sense.
“Return? Dean Morrison, she calls me every month from campus. She told me about her thesis just the other day.”
“Hannah hasn’t attended classes here in just over a year.”
“Okay. What about it?”
The coffee pot slipped from my hand and shattered across the tile.
“No,” I said, staring at the spreading coffee. “I sent her tuition four days ago.”
“We haven’t billed Hannah in a year, ma’am,” he said. “She won a full-tuition scholarship before requesting a formal gap year.”
I gripped the counter. “You’re saying I’ve been sending money for nothing?”
“I sent her tuition four days ago.”
“I’m saying you should come to my office today. There’s something you need to see.”
“Is Hannah in trouble?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “But you don’t have the whole truth.”
I didn’t clean the glass. I changed my wet socks, grabbed Tom’s truck keys, and drove to campus.
Dean Morrison stood when I entered his office.
“Where’s Hannah?” I asked.
“Is Hannah in trouble?”
“Nearby. I asked her to wait.”
“Why?”
“Because Hannah gave me permission to show you this before you speak to her.”
He slid a manila folder across the desk.
I didn’t sit.
