Rae’s brow furrowed. “Oh?”
I nodded. “Yeah. He came by more than a few times and kicked off arguments with Cecilia.”
Her eyes popped open. “Wait a second, you never told me that.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t want to worry you. I took care of it. Though once I had to call the police to have him escorted off the property.”
“See, this is what I don’t get about you. Why are you leaving me out of the loop all of a sudden?”
“I’m not leaving you out of the loop. I’m trying to fill you in now.”
“Yeah, two weeks later. How many times have we had alone time in the past two weeks?”
I paused. “Once, Rae. And that was only for a few minutes before your mother interjected and you invited her to join us for our pizza and a movie night.”
She swallowed hard. “Oh.”
“Yeah. So… anyway. The divorce is over. But things didn’t quite go our way.”
“How so?”
I sighed. “Dad fought in court that if Mom wanted her half of his money, then she should also assume half of his debt.”
She sat up. “What?”
I nodded. “Yeah. His lawyer argued that if she wanted to get her hands on his money, then it was only fair to ‘split up the red as well as the black’ between them.”
“Don’t tell me the judge went for it.”
“Yeah. He did.”
“You know damn good and well your father paid off that fucking judge.”
I shrugged. “Maybe so. But when the divorce was finalized, more than half of the money she got from my father was eaten up in past-due debt. Credit cards she racked up that he stopped paying on. Shit like that.”
“Wait, the card he had to legally let her use until the divorce finalized, he stopped paying on?”
I nodded slowly. “He manipulated this every step of the way. By the time Cecilia was done paying off the debt she inherited from the divorce, she had enough money to do one of two things. Set it aside for an eventual retirement if she wanted to ever have any solace in her later years. Or live frugally without a job until she could figure something out.”
“What did she pick, Clint?”
“I told her it was financially responsible for her to set that money aside. Let it grow, like a retirement fund. Maybe in a decade, if she invests wisely, it’ll grow to a point where she only has to work part-time. Because that’s the only kind of work she can find right now with absolutely no work history.”
“And until then?”
“I’ve… been helping her as much as I can.”
Realization washed over Rae’s face. And for the first time in months, she softened toward me.
“Why the fuck didn’t you just tell me this was going on?”
I shrugged. “Things between us have been rough lately. I didn't know if you were going through something at home, and I didn't want to pile on.”
“Why didn’t you just ask then, Clint? You never ask if I’m okay.”
“I ask how you’re doing all the time.”
“It’s not the same.”