hallway mirror as he talked, his tone tinged with anger, his face turning red. “You know we can’t afford things like that. If it was more than fifty bucks, you’ll have to take it back.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Eliza retorted, wiping Austin’s chin again and standing to face her husband, who was now grabbing his suit jacket and briefcase from the adjoining living room. He headed towards the front door. “Besides, you didn’t seem to mind the price last night when you took it off me.”
Alex wheeled around. “Why, you little…” He bit back his words, his mouth a grimace, his normally handsome face turning into an ugly mask of fury. Saying nothing more, he stomped away, slamming the front door closed behind him.
Eliza sat back down at the kitchen table, put her head in her hands, and wept.
“MY HUSBAND IS A GOOD MAN, he really is, it’s just that, well, it’s my fault he’s doing the things he does now.”
Eliza blew her nose into a tissue as she sat with Marsha in the mall’s food court, her uneaten hamburger sitting cold before her. Marsha had gone with her friend to return the outfit. It was a good thing she didn’t get any makeup or food stains on it. It was Saturday, and Alex had stayed home with the boys.
Walking past storefronts all decked out for the Christmas holidays just made Eliza feel more miserable. Knowing she couldn’t spend much money, she told Marsha she had a headache and went home right after lunch. She had already done some of her Christmas shopping for the kids and her husband online, and even though she wanted to buy them more, her heart just wasn’t into it.
When she got home, Alex and the boys were napping. Eliza cheered up a bit knowing she would have a little quiet time to herself.
She sat down in the spare room that they had set up as an office and opened her laptop to check her emails. Eliza had applied for several part-time jobs and saw a few responses in her inbox. She hadn’t told Alex about it, knowing he would object to her spending any time away from the kids. “We just have to make sacrifices, and besides, any job that means we have to pay for day care won’t be worth it,” he had said. While she was barely able to fit in the data entry work she was already doing during the kids’ nap times, bed time, and “quiet” or TV time, Eliza figured perhaps she could find a way. Anything so she could have a little spending money and things didn’t feel quite so tight. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to look for something better out there.
While scrolling through her emails, her breath caught in her throat. There was an email from their bank, and the subject line read, “Bank alert, past due credit card payment.”
Alex handled all of their banking, checkbook balancing, budgeting, and bill paying. This was the first time she had ever received an email from their bank, even though all of their accounts were joint. Eliza had never questioned Alex’s ability to handle their financial matters, nor did she want anything to do with it all.
Her fingers trembled as she hesitantly opened the email.
“Your credit card account xxx-x-x0254 is past due. The current balance is $5,523.” Eliza blinked, not believing the figure before her eyes. How could that be? Even given her Christmas shopping online and even if her return had not gone through yet, she had spent nowhere near that much money in the past few months, not to mention the past few years.
It had to be a mistake. Her heart thumped with fear.
She decided to open up their bank account to take a look, but it had been so long since she had checked it that she couldn’t remember the password. Think! She knew it was the kids’ names coupled with an important date. Their wedding anniversary? Her birthday? She typed in all of the possible combinations she could think of, and still it wouldn’t open.
One more try. CameronAustin1225. It worked. Alex must have changed the date. She watched the little circle spin until their bank account opened before her. She scanned the summary of accounts. There was a positive $225 in their checking account, a positive $990 in their savings account, and there it was, $5,523 staring back at her in their credit card account.
She and Alex had had credit issues in the past when they were just starting out in their marriage and at one point decided together to tear up their credit cards and just have one in case of emergency, which she had only used for Christmas and to splurge on the outfit she had bought then returned.
She clicked on the account number and saw several transactions, all labeled “Gila River Casinos.” She glanced down the transaction sheet. There were a few payments of $100 or $250, and about a dozen $500 charges.
Her stomach knotted up, and for a moment she thought she was going to throw up the little bit of lunch she had eaten.
And then she heard a stirring, a man’s footfalls shuffling in the distant corner of the ranch house, her husband making his way to where she sat. She had closed the door, but it was only a matter of minutes before he’d find her. She quickly closed the account window, shut down the computer, and willed herself to calm down, taking deep breaths like they had taught her in Lamaze class.
“Hey, what are you up to?” The office door swung open, and his words startled her even though she anticipated them.
“Nothing. I mean, just playing around on the computer, but I got bored so I was just going to come in and check on you and the kids.” Eliza felt her face flush and turned away to pretend to straighten up a few papers and books on the desk. She stood and stretched, feigning boredom. “I guess I should have crawled in with you to take a nap instead.”
“Hmmm…well we could go back to bed, but since I’ve already had a nap…” Alex playfully winked at her and smiled.
Eliza’s stomach lurched, but she fought to control the nausea that resurfaced at his implication.
Mercifully, they heard the sound of Austin talking gibberish on the baby monitor, and then Cameron poked his head in from around his dad’s legs. “Hi, Mommy, I’m hungry, can I have a snack?” Eliza rolled her eyes and shrugged at her husband, trying to be playful. “Sure, honey, let me fix you a snack,” she said, taking Cameron’s hand to lead him to the kitchen.
“Maybe later,” Alex whispered in her ear when she passed him in the doorway.
“I THINK your husband has a gambling addiction.” Barbara Paulus, PhD, shifted slightly in her upholstered chair where she sat facing Eliza, who sat nervously fidgeting with a tissue in her hands on the small couch across the room.
Eliza had barely gotten any sleep the night she found out about the credit card debt. She had mulled over calling Marsha in the morning to vent her fears and anger but realized her friend was probably not the best confidante, having a penchant for gossip.
Eliza had done a good job of nearly isolating herself in her postpartum blues. And in her consummation with being a good wife and mother and working her part-time job, her world had shrunk even further. Marsha had become her only friend, and a superficial one at that.
But Eliza wasn’t a stranger to loneliness.
CHAPTER 2
ELIZA HAD ACTUALLY GROWN up as a girl named Anna in the Navajo clan of her mother, Wenona Hosteen, who had married her father, Paco Becenti, or rather, was married off to him by her parents when she was just seventeen.
Anna lived with her parents and two older sisters, Flo and Dena, within the borders of the
