Chapter 3 Her Ten Thousand
612 Words
I laughed. The sound that came out was bitter enough to hurt my own ears.
Pulling out my phone, I opened my bank balance and shoved the screen directly in front of Simon. The monthly allowance he gave me was one thousand dollars. That money covered groceries, utilities, Tessa's school expenses, and every other cost for a family of three. In a city like Kingsport, where even the smallest apartment cost a fortune, that thousand dollars barely kept us afloat.
How many times had I carefully gone over the household budget with him?
Simon never even looked up from his phone. At most, he would respond with a distracted "got it" before brushing the conversation aside.
"The economy's rough right now. We just need to be a little more careful with money," he said.
Right then, his phone rang. The moment Simon glanced at the caller ID, his expression softened almost instinctively.
"What's up?" he asked as he answered.
Megan's voice immediately drifted through the speaker, sweet and familiar.
"I got the allowance," she said lightly. "Did you send an extra three thousand this month? Oh, and I bought Tommy a new pair of shoes for a thousand dollars. He was so happy."
A little boy's excited shout rang out from the other end of the call, and Simon smiled without even realizing it.
"Tommy's growing up fast," he said warmly. "Raising a kid on your own isn't easy. I should have been giving you more before. I'll make it ten thousand from now on."
For a moment, all the blood in my body seemed to freeze.
I stared at him, unable to breathe. So it wasn't that the younger Simon had once been generous. His generosity had simply never belonged to me.
I thought about the savings account I had nearly emptied just to keep our household running. I thought about Tessa's clothes, washed so many times that the fabric had faded thin, yet I still hesitated every time I considered replacing them.
Everything around me suddenly felt ridiculous.
"Ten thousand dollars?" I looked at Simon and laughed in disbelief. "You're giving her ten thousand dollars every month?"
Simon quickly hung up the call. When he saw my expression, he cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Claire, Megan's raising a child alone. Life's hard for her." He frowned slightly. "It's not the same for you. You have me here helping you. There's no need to compete with her."
I lowered my eyes to the shoes on my feet. The soles had come apart long ago, but I still hadn't thrown them away after getting them repaired again and again.
The irony was so sharp it almost made me laugh.
"Your son gets thousand-dollar sneakers," I said quietly, "but I'm supposed to run this entire household on a thousand dollars a month without complaining?"
"You were the one who told me to quit my job," I continued, staring straight at him. "You said you would take care of me and our daughter. Was that your idea of taking care of us?"
Simon's brow furrowed immediately. "Claire, there's no need to be so aggressive."
"What's the big deal about buying a pair of shoes once in a while?" he said defensively. "If we're really counting expenses, the heels I bought you cost two thousand dollars. Why aren't you mentioning that?"
"I don't wear size 6."
Simon went still. "What?"
Something inside me finally snapped. "When you bought shoes for Megan and picked up a pair for me as an afterthought," I said, my voice trembling with anger, "did it ever once occur to you that my shoe size is 5?"
Simon stood frozen in place.
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