“When?”
“When I paid you back.”
“And when was that going to be?”
He had no answer that was not a story. Eleanor had heard enough stories. She looked at the side of his face—the jaw she had iced after a playground fight in fourth grade, the ear she had cleaned with a washcloth when he was too small to sit still—and felt the old double pull of fury and love that motherhood never quite untangles.
“Tell me what you owe,” she said. “Not the watch. The marriage. What do you owe her that made my money look like the right tool?”
Harrison was quiet a long time. When he spoke his voice was rough. “She grew up watching her parents perform success until the performance cracked. Her daddy’s dealership went under. Her mama kept buying purses anyway. Sloan swears she won’t be them, and then she gets scared she’s becoming them, and the scare makes her reach for anything that looks like proof she’s winning. I keep handing her proof. I thought if I could keep her from being scared I could keep us from cracking.”
“And my account was the quarry for proof.”