CHAP 4 — The Baby Fund
The bank representative froze every shared access point within twelve minutes.
Old debit card canceled.
Digital wallet locked.
Pending suspicious charges flagged.
New password.
New PIN.
New alerts sent only to my phone and Hannah’s.
While I answered security questions, my sisters began panicking.
Brooke’s phone stopped working first.
She shook it like signal could be bullied back.
“What did you do?”
“I stopped paying for it.”
“You can’t. I have interviews.”
“You had four months.”
Tessa’s screen went dark next.
She cursed loudly.
Erin started crying because her food delivery app declined the card.
Darlene watched them unravel, and for the first time, I saw fear behind her anger.
Not fear of losing me.
Fear of losing access.
Hannah sat at the kitchen table while I brought her water and helped her put her feet up. Her hands trembled around the glass.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I stopped.
“No.”
“I should have told you sooner.”
“No, Hannah.”
She looked at me, tears spilling again.
“I thought you’d think I was making you choose.”
I crouched beside her chair.
“They made you think telling the truth was cruelty.”
Her lips pressed together.
I placed my hand gently on her stomach.
Our son kicked once.
Small.
Strong.
I almost broke right there.
But I still had work to do.
I called our landlord.
Then the non-emergency police line.
Then my friend Luis, who lived two buildings over and had once helped me move a refrigerator up three flights of stairs. I asked him to come sit with Hannah while I handled my family.
He arrived in nine minutes, took one look at the living room, and said, “Damn, Marcus.”
That was all.
A police officer arrived twenty minutes later for a civil standby. Since my mother and sisters were not on the lease and had been guests, they could be required to leave. They were allowed to gather essentials. Anything else could be arranged later.
Darlene became sweet when the officer entered.
“My son is confused,” she said. “His wife is emotional from pregnancy.”
The officer looked toward Hannah, then at the mess, then at me.
“Sir, are you asking these guests to leave?”
“Yes.”
Darlene gasped.
“Guests? I am his mother.”
The officer remained calm.
“Ma’am, are you on the lease?”
She said nothing.
Brooke tried to claim she had rights because she received mail there.
She did not.
She had never changed her address because responsibility bored her.
The packing took forty minutes.
Forty minutes of muttering, crying, threats, and accusations.
Darlene called me cruel.
Brooke called Hannah manipulative.
Tessa said I was brainwashed.
Erin asked if she could at least take the leftover pizza.
I said yes because I wanted the smell gone.
When they finally stood by the door with bags in their hands, my mother turned back.
“You’ll regret this when that woman leaves you.”
Hannah stood slowly.
Her voice was soft but clear.
“No, Darlene. He’ll regret not doing it sooner.”
My mother’s face twisted.
The officer opened the door.
They left.
The apartment became silent in a way I had not heard in months.
Then Hannah started sobbing.
May you like
I held her in the middle of the destroyed living room, surrounded by trash my family had left behind, and understood that kicking them out was only the beginning.
The harder part would be forgiving myself for letting them stay so long.
