I Paid His Down Payment, But My Son Thanked His Stepmom Instead Chapter 05

“Barrett, he’s my son!”

“I know.” His voice was calm. “Sign it, and you can visit him whenever you want. I won’t stop you.”

“Besides, the way you are now, you can’t take care of a kid.”

“Delphine, your mother’s lying in there. It’s your call.”

The hallway lights were blinding. A nurse came out again to remind us that time was running out.

I signed. My handwriting came out crooked, like a child’s.

Barrett folded the paper and handed it to Tamsin.

“Go make the transfer.”

She nodded and gave me a little smile.

“Don’t worry, Delphine.”

That night, the money didn’t come.

I called Tamsin over and over. She kept saying the bank had a transfer limit and she’d send it first thing in the morning.

I stayed outside the OR, begging the doctors to operate first.

They told me hospital policy wouldn’t allow it.

At two in the morning, my mother died.

At 9:12 a.m., my phone chimed.

Two hundred thousand dollars had landed.

I sat outside the morgue, staring at the message. I couldn’t cry.

It was drizzling on the day of my mother’s funeral.

Not many people came. Rourke wasn’t among them.

My mother had helped raise him for seven years.

She picked him up from school every day and knitted sweaters for him.

Whenever he had a fever, she stayed by his side and made sure he took his medicine.

Around noon, a relative handed me a phone. It was Barrett and Tamsin’s wedding.

Rourke stood between them in a little suit, holding a ring box, grinning from ear to ear.

So they’d already picked the date. That very day.

Later, when Rourke made that accusation in court, I didn’t defend myself.

My mother was already gone. Nothing I said could bring her back.

I never touched a single dollar of that two hundred thousand.

I never told anyone where it went.

The first few years after the divorce were brutal.

I spent countless afternoons outside Rourke’s school, watching him from a distance, leaving before he could see me.

For his fifteenth birthday, I had a pair of sneakers delivered to him. The next day, the unopened box was outside my door.

Four words on the lid.

[Stop sending me things.]

I got seriously ill and was in bed for six months. The school didn’t renew my contract.

The old woman next door brought me soup every day and slowly nursed me back.

Back then, I figured that was all life had left for me.

But people are strange.

Hurt long enough, and the pain starts to fade.

I started teaching piano to kids in the neighborhood—thirty dollars an hour. Kept at it for years.

Life was quiet and simple, but at least it was peaceful.

Then, last month, Rourke came to see me—on his own, for the first time.

He said he was getting married. His fiancée’s family wanted a house first, and he was still eight hundred sixty thousand short on the down payment. Tamsin was helping him figure it out.

He sat on my old couch with his head bowed, rubbing his hands together.

“Mom, I know things have been rough between us…”

“If you can swing it, could you help me out?”

I didn’t let him finish.

A few days later, I sold the house.

I scraped together eight hundred sixty thousand and sent every cent to the account he gave me.

The day the money went through, he called me.

“Mom, thank you. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”

But at the wedding, it came out that Tamsin had paid the down payment.

I didn’t say anything. That was the last thing I’d ever do for him.

By the time I finished, it was already dark.

She was crying so hard that she’d gone through a whole handful of tissues.

“Ms. Marchetti, why didn’t you ever stand up for yourself?”

“How could he do that to you?”

I patted her hand, about to answer, when my phone rang.

The screen lit up. Rourke.

I picked up. It was loud on his end, like he was standing by a busy road.

His voice was painfully hoarse.

“Mom, where are you?”

“Why’s the old house empty? There’s a real estate sign on the door saying the sale closes next Wednesday.”

“You sold the house?”

“But Tamsin said you only sent sixty thousand.”

He took a breath, and suddenly his voice began to shake.

“Tamsin told me the money was…”