Chapter 5 - The Card
At the start of the next month I opened my banking app over coffee and found a $612.48 charge on a backup card I almost never used — a card that lived in a locked drawer in my home office. The charges came from a clothing store, a cosmetics counter, and a department store at the mall.
I went upstairs. My office door was open. The drawer wasn't fully shut.
I carried the statement down. Renee was by the window doing her makeup.
I put the paper on the coffee table. "What is this?"
She glanced at it. "Oh. I used your card."
"You went into my desk?"
"I needed some things."
"Without asking me?"
"I'll pay you back."
"When?"
She rolled her eyes. "You make good money, Renee. Why are you counting a few hundred dollars against your own sister?"
"Because you went through my private office to spend it."
"I needed clothes for interviews."
"Have you had any interviews?"
Silence.
"How many jobs have you even applied for?"
She stood up. "I don't have to report to you."
"You live in my house."
"Mom said this was supposed to help me."
"It was supposed to. Not fund a shopping trip you didn't ask permission for."
"Stop keeping score."
Keeping score. As if noticing an unauthorized $612 charge on my own card made me the villain of the story.
I locked the card. Changed the office lock. Documented everything and asked her, in writing, to repay it as part of our arrangement.
She called Dad. Ten minutes later my phone rang.
"Megan, this has gone far enough," he said, skipping hello entirely.
"What has?"
"Making your sister feel like a criminal over six hundred dollars."
"I never called her a criminal. She used my credit card without asking."
"She said she'll pay you back."
"With what income?"
Silence.
"Dad, she still isn't applying anywhere."
"She needs time."
"She's had months."
"You have plenty of money, Megan."
That sentence landed differently coming from him. "So permission depends on how much I make?"
"That's not what I said."
"It's exactly what you said."
He sighed. "You've gotten very hard lately."
May you like
I looked around my own kitchen — kids' lunch bags lined up on the counter, the utility bill sitting by the coffee maker, my office locked because my sister had ignored the last boundary I'd drawn.
"No," I said. "I've gotten tired."
