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5:30 p.m.
Suddenly, I was feeling a whole lot worse.
Sharon and I had been hammering out the details later that day over the phone. And it looked like the details were going to bankrupt me.
“The sound and lights booked. Studio musicians hired.” She chuckled, a sound that made me oddly uneasy. “Actually, those guys are gonna be interesting.”
I felt my stomach-churning acid. This was becoming bigger than I’d ever imagined.
“Promotion we talked about—I’ve already placed an ad in the Gazette and I’ve sent emails to everyone on the media list, but it would be a lot better if we could take out a full page ad in the Toronto Star as well.” She paused for a moment. “Did you get the figures I emailed you?”
My heart jumped up. “When did you email those?”
“Just a few minutes ago. Don’t you have your Blackberry with you?”
“I can’t afford a Blackberry.” My mind was racing ahead.
“Pffffff. Amateurs.”
I was in the kitchen.
Allison was downstairs. On the computer.
This was not good.
“I’ll call you right back, Sharon,” I whispered.
I stood frozen to the spot for a moment, waiting for it. My feet wouldn’t move.
There was a strange sound downstairs, like the air being sucked into an atomic explosion a beat before the incineration.
In my own personal horror movie, I found myself creeping down the stairs towards my certain doom. I hoped Allison didn’t have a chainsaw. She was sitting with her back to me. I was afraid to see her face. It was the sound of her voice that was the most terrible. She spoke quietly, in her short sentences.
“What have you done, Donny?”
“Allison, it looks bad but I haven’t done anything yet.”
“You were going to take out a fifty-thousand-dollar loan. We would lose everything. We would be bankrupt. With a newborn baby.”
A knifing pain tore through my chest.
“I won’t do it, Allison. I promise—”
Suddenly, my wife’s rage flared. She whirled around to face me, something resembling hatred in her expression. It chilled me to the bone.
“You always promise! And you always let me down! But I won’t take it anymore. If you break this promise to me, our marriage is over!”
She pushed past me and thumped up the stairs, sobbing angrily.
I found myself staring at the computer screen.
You can probably guess what I did next.
