The payment schedule.
“You SOLD yourself to marry my sister?”
“I know what it looks like, but let me explain—”
“Explain WHAT, Ben?” My voice cracked against the walls. “That you took money from my parents to marry Rosie? She is fighting for her life in there! And you stood beside her at the altar with a check in your pocket?”
Ben slid down the wall.
Then he said something that stole my breath.
“Explain WHAT, Ben?”
He was crying.
“I never cashed a single one,” he whispered. “Every check they sent went into an account in Rosie’s name. Every dollar. She’ll have it when she needs it. Every penny is hers.”
I wanted to believe him.
But something wasn’t adding up.
“Then why sign it? Why put your name on something so disgusting?”
Something wasn’t adding up.
Ben looked at the floor.
“Because I saw where they planned to send her… A place called Willow Grove.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But the way he said it made my knees weak.
I sank onto the tile across from him because my legs would not hold me anymore.
“Your mother showed me the brochure. She said you both were adults, and Rosie was becoming a burden nobody in the family would carry.”
“I saw where they planned to send her.”
“That’s not true. She’s not a burden, and I would’ve looked after her IF she needed me to.”
“They never planned to tell you.” His voice was so quiet I had to lean forward. “Your mother said, ‘Cathy deserves a life of her own. We won’t chain her to Rosie.'”
“She said that?”
“She offered me a settlement to marry Rosie. Legal guardianship. I didn’t sign for any of that — I signed because I love her. Because I want her to have the life she deserves.”
I looked down at the paper crushed against my chest.
There was one thing I couldn’t get over.
