Chapter 3 - The Blue Receipt
I stared at the tiny slip of paper resting inside the locket.
The ink was faded, but the numbers were stamped clearly in bold purple ink: Deposit: $15,000. Account: Mary Sullivan.
My mother’s maiden name. The date was October 12, 1988. Exactly two days after Mark received the breakup letter.
“Where did you get this?” I asked Mark, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“I didn’t put it in there,” Mark said, looking just as confused. “When I opened the locket on the base, it was empty. I never took the backing out. The receipt must have been slipped behind the photo slot before it was sent.”
I looked at Richard. All the color had drained from his face.
“Fifteen thousand dollars,” I said. In 1988, that was enough to buy a small house outright in our town. “Where did she get that kind of money, Richard?”
He swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Liar.” I grabbed the receipt. “Your father sold his secondary hardware lot in late September of that year. I remember because you bought your first new car the next week. Did you pay my mother to force me to marry you?”
“It was a loan!” Richard shouted, causing the DJ’s music to feel suddenly very inadequate at covering the noise. “She was going to lose the house, Ellen! The bank was foreclosing!”
Beth gasped from the other side of the table.
My mother had never missed a mortgage payment in her life. Or so she told me.
“She had a gambling problem,” Richard said, his voice dropping into a vicious sneer. “Bingo. The tracks. Whatever she could bet on. She was thirty days from the street. I paid her debts. And in exchange, she made sure you didn’t ruin your life waiting for a soldier who might not come back.”
I felt like the floor was tilting. My mother, the strict, pious woman who scolded me for buying a magazine, had secretly gambled away our home. And Richard had bought her silence—and my hand in marriage.
“I need to leave,” I choked out.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Mark said immediately.
“She’s my wife,” Richard snarled, stepping in front of him.
“She’s walking out the door,” Mark replied, his voice calm but carrying the unmistakable steel of a military officer. “The only question is whether you’re going to make a scene that your kids will hear about tomorrow.”
Richard froze. He cared more about his reputation than anything else in the world.
I turned and walked out of the ballroom. The cool night air hit my face, and I realized I was crying.
Mark walked beside me in silence until we reached my sedan.
“I never stopped looking for you,” he said quietly as I unlocked the door. “Even when I thought you were married and happy. I checked your social media just to make sure you were smiling.”
“I was smiling for the camera, Mark. That’s all.”
He reached out and gently touched my arm. “Tomorrow, I’m going to the county records office. If Richard paid off a foreclosure, there’s a paper trail. Do you want to come with me?”
I looked at the man I had loved when I was a girl.
“Yes,” I said.
May you like
Before I could get in the car, my phone buzzed in my purse. It was a text from my brother, Paul, who still lived in our mother’s old house.
Richard just called me in a panic. He says you’re leaving him. Ellen, whatever you do, DO NOT look in the attic cedar chest.
