He Spent My Savings on My Best Friend

For three years of long-distance love, I saved three hundred and sixty-four train tickets to Cloud City.

Today was the three hundred and sixty-fifth.

I brought the scarf I'd knitted by hand, wanting to surprise Tim James.

Instead I let myself in with the spare key and found clothes scattered all over the floor.

My best friend, Lisa Fox, was walking out of the bathroom wearing my pajamas.

Tim wrapped his arms around her from behind. "That stiff little thing has to work late tonight. She won't come."

I stood in the doorway, watching them.

The report in my pocket, the one that said severe depression, didn't feel that important anymore.

Right there in front of them, I tore the three hundred and sixty-five tickets apart, one by one.

"Tim. I hope you two rot together, you and your bitch. Forever."

The air in the apartment was heavy with it.

Lisa was pinned against his chest, pushing him back. "Stop it, quit it. What if Denise Pruitt"

"Her?"

Tim laughed, and every word dripped contempt.

"She's such a prude. Tell her to work late and she won't leave one minute early."

"Besides, how many times have I told her to quit her job and come to Cloud City? Has she ever listened?"

"Guarding that dump of a library for a few thousand a month. What's she ever going to amount to?"

Lisa giggled, tapping a finger against his chest.

"Then why are you still with her?"

"Might as well keep her around. All that money she scrimped and saved, doesn't it all end up in our hands anyway?"

Tim lowered his head and kissed her hair.

"Baby, you like the bag I bought you last time? That was a whole year of her salary."

"You're so cruel to her."

Lisa said it, but her face was pure smug delight.

I stood in the doorway, watching the show.

The scarf in my hand had taken me half a month to knit. Cream cashmere, so soft.

Now it was wound around my wrist, and it felt cold.

They finally noticed me.

Tim's face froze, and he let go of Lisa.

Lisa let out a theatrical shriek and clutched her chest.

What she had on was the silk nightgown I'd bought last month. I'd never once let myself wear it.

"Denise? What are you doing here?"

Tim's voice came out dry, and he started toward me.

I said nothing.

I pulled the thick stack of train tickets from my pocket.

Three hundred and sixty-five of them, all from the small town to Cloud City.

Every weekend and every holiday of the last three years.

Tim's face changed.

"Denise, let me explain. It's not what you think."

Lisa spoke up too, timid and small.

"Denise, don't get the wrong idea. Tim and I onlywe just had too much to drink."

Too much to drink?

Too much to drink, and you walk out of his bathroom in my pajamas?

I looked at them and thought how ridiculous it was.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry.

I just picked up the top ticket, right there in front of them.

The sound of it tearing was loud in the quiet room.

Tim's pupils shrank.

"Denise! What are you doing!"

I ignored him and tore the second one.

This was the ticket from last Valentine's Day. The roads were closed with snow that day, and I rode a slow old train for more than ten hours.

When he saw me, all he said was, "What took you so long?"

Then he dumped me alone in his rented room because he had a client to entertain.

One after another.

These tickets I'd once treasured now cut my fingers until they ached.

Tim moved to grab them, and a single look from me drove him back.

"Don't touch me."

He stopped where he was.

He'd probably never seen me like this.

In his eyes I was always the same gentle, obedient Denise.

Lisa hid behind him, crying softly.

"Denise, don't do this, you're scaring me."

I looked at her and, suddenly, I laughed.

"Lisa, I asked you to look after him. I didn't ask you to look after him in bed."

"I scraped and saved and lent him that money to invest. Not so he could buy you bags."

The color drained from Lisa's face.

Tim's expression turned uglier.

"Denise, don't talk like that. There's just been a little misunderstanding between us."

A misunderstanding?

I tore the last ticket in half, and together with the depression diagnosis report, I threw it all into the air.

The scraps drifted down.

They fell on their stunned faces, on the clothes strewn across the floor.

"Tim."

I looked at him, calm.

"From today, we're square."

Then I turned and walked away.

Tim's shout came from behind me.

"Denise! Stop right there! Who do you think you are? Can't take a joke, is that it?"

"If you've got the nerve to leave, then don't you come back!"

I didn't turn around. I walked out into the night of Cloud City.

By the time I got back to town, the sky was already light.

I didn't go home. I went straight to the library.

When my colleague Abigail Lambert saw me, she jumped.

Denise? Didn't you take time off to go to Cloud City? Why do you look so awful?

I tugged at the corner of my mouth. No smile came.

I'm fine, Abigail. I just didn't sleep well.

I started tidying the shelves and logging the new arrivals, my movements mechanical.

It let me stop thinking about it for a while.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I didn't have to look to know it was Tim.

I took it out and blocked his number.

Every messaging app, every way he had to reach me, deleted.

In my mind, the diagnosis report I'd torn to pieces was already frayed at the edges.

Severe depression, with anxiety symptoms.

The doctor's words were still in my ears.

You need medication and psychological intervention right away. Your condition is dangerous.

Dangerous?

At the time, all I felt was how absurd that sounded.

I was just so tired. All I wanted was to see Tim, get my money back, and then get treatment.

All my savings, two hundred thousand, were with him.

He'd said he was going in on a project with a friend, a sure thing, and I'd make my money back in six months.

I believed him.

The same way I'd believed every I love you he ever said.

Now, looking back, that money had probably all turned into designer bags on Lisa's arm.

I sat in the corner of the library and looked out the window.

The sun was bright, but I couldn't feel any warmth from it.

There wasn't a scrap of strength left in my body.

Abigail brought over a cup of hot water and set it in front of me.

Denise, don't keep it bottled up. Talk to me.

I looked at the concern in her eyes, and my throat went tight.

Abigail, I got scammed.

I told her the whole thing, the two hundred thousand I'd lent him, all of it.

Abigail was so furious she smacked the table.

That pair of cheating dogs! They're not even human!

Denise, you can't just let this money go! Two hundred thousand, that's everything you have!

She was right. That was everything I'd scraped together over five years of work, going without.

It was the down payment I'd been saving to put on a place in Cloud City, to build a home with Tim.

It was also the money keeping me alive now.

Abigail looked at the wreck of me, and it broke her heart.

Denise, listen to me. Go to the police.

The police?

I froze.

ButI transferred that money to him willingly.

What does the transfer record say?

Investment.

Abigail slapped her thigh.

There you go! He told you it was an investment, then spent it buying his mistress a bag. That's fraud!

Save all your messages, all your transfer records. That's your evidence!

Her words snapped something clear in me.

Right. Go to the police.

I was going to get back what was mine.

I needed that money to treat my illness.

I dialed 911.

The moment the call connected, my hand was still shaking.

But my voice was calm.

Hello, I'd like to report a crime.

A man named Tim James defrauded me of two hundred thousand dollars under the pretense of an investment.

Tim probably thought I was just throwing a tantrum.

When he realized I'd blocked him everywhere, he started sending messages through our mutual friends.

"Denise, are you done acting out?"

"So you caught me with Lisa. Is that really worth disappearing over?"

"Fine, I admit I was wrong. Happy? Now hurry up and add me back."

"Keep this up and I'll come to your place and find you!"

I didn't reply to a single one.

When he couldn't reach me, he started calling my parents.

All they knew was that Tim and I were dating, and they'd thought well enough of him.

When the call came, they figured we'd just had a fight.

"Denise, honey, Tim says he can't get hold of you. He's beside himself."

"You young people, is there anything you can't just talk through? Why would you block him?"

I told my mother calmly.

"Mom, we broke up."

"If he calls again, don't answer."

She kept trying to talk me around, so I just hung up.

I knew they'd worry, but I didn't have the strength to explain right now.

Tim's patience ran out fast.

His texts went from demanding answers to threats.

"Denise, I'm warning you, don't try to pull this with me."

"You think I can't live without you? Plenty of women are after me!"

"You've got three days. Crawl back here and apologize, or we're finished for good!"

I looked at those texts and felt nothing.

Finished for good?

We were finished a long time ago.

The moment he held Lisa in his arms and called me a "block of wood," it was finished.

On the third day, the police came for Tim.

When they took him into the station on suspicion of fraud, he was completely stunned.

"Officer, isn't there some mistake?"

"Denise and I are a couple. This was just normal money moving between partners."

The officer laid out the chat logs and transfer records I'd provided.

"Tim James, when Ms. Denise Pruitt transferred two hundred thousand to you, you stated clearly in the chat that the money was for an investment in the 'Riverside Avenue property project in Cloud City.'"

"But according to our investigation, that project does not exist."

"And you have a large purchase record, from a designer store, for goods bought for a woman with the surname Fox."

"This already constitutes fraud."

The color drained from Tim's face.

Only then did it hit him that I wasn't joking.

I really was pressing charges.

He panicked.

He started calling me, and when he couldn't get through, he switched numbers and called again.

I didn't answer a single one.

The moment he was released on bail, the first thing he did was go find Lisa.

He thought she'd stick with him and help figure something out.

He rushed to her place, only to find it empty.

Her phone was off, and she'd blocked him on WeChat too.

He checked the bank account holding my two hundred thousand. Balance: zero.

Lisa had taken his money and run.

The fact left Tim's mind a blank.

He started looking for me everywhere.

He knew that now, only I could save him.

If I dropped the charges, he'd be in the clear.

He got on a train to my town, and for the first time it wasn't me going to him.

He rushed to my house, and my parents blocked the door.

"Please, please let me see Denise!"

"I was wrong, I really was wrong!"

"I'm done with Lisa. Denise is the only one I love!"

He frightened my parents, but they held their ground at the door.

"Tim, just go. Denise doesn't want to see you."

"Where is she? Tell me where she is!"

He knelt at my door and cried.

The neighbors all came out to watch, pointing and whispering.

"Isn't that the boyfriend of the Pruitt girl? Heard he works in the big city."

"Tsk, tsk. Down on his knees crying like that, he must've done something to wrong her."

Tim didn't care.

He had only one thought: find me, beg me to forgive him.

He went to the library to look for me.

Abigail stopped him.

"So you're Tim?"

She looked him up and down, contempt all over her face.

"What are you here for? Denise doesn't want to see you."

"Abigail, I'm begging you, just tell me where she is."

Tim's voice was hoarse, his eyes shot through with red.

"I can't lose her. If I go to prison, my whole life is ruined!"

Abigail let out a cold laugh.

"Ruined? When you were ruining Denise, did it ever cross your mind it might come to this?"

"Do you have any idea what she's become because of you?"

Tim froze, looking at Abigail without understanding.

"She what happened to her?"

Abigail looked at him and said it word by word.

"Denise has been hospitalized."

Tim didn't believe it.

He thought it was a lie I'd made up to avoid him.

"Hospitalized? For what? She was perfectly healthy, wasn't she?"

Abigail pulled a photo out of the drawer and slapped it down in front of him.

In it, I was wearing a blue-and-white striped hospital gown, sitting in the hospital garden.

My eyes were empty, my body thin, like a doll with no soul left in it.

Tim's hands shook as he picked up the photo.

"This... where is this?"

Abigail's eyes were cold.

"The city mental health center. Severe depression. Closed treatment."

Those words made Tim's chest clench.

Mental health center... closed treatment...

He couldn't make any of it fit with the Denise who was always smiling so gently.

"It's not possible... it's absolutely not possible!"

He muttered it under his breath, his face bloodless.

"She was always fine. How could she have depression?"

Abigail laughed, and the laugh was full of scorn.

"Fine?"

"Tim, three years of long-distance, and did you care about her for even one single day?"

"Did you know that to save money to come see you, she ate nothing but plain bread and pickles every day?"

"Did you know how much pressure she was under at work, that she lay awake whole nights unable to sleep?"

"Did you know how helpless she was when you swindled every cent of her savings, when she couldn't even scrape together the money to see a doctor?"

Every sentence Abigail said left Tim mortified.

He stepped back and only steadied himself by leaning against the bookshelf.

He had always thought Denise was strong.

She was always so sensible, so considerate, never once a burden to him.

He had enjoyed everything she gave him, and never once thought that she had stopped being able to hold on long ago.

He thought of the last time he saw me.

I stood in the doorway, looking calmly at him and Lisa.

Calmly tearing up those three hundred and sixty-five train tickets.

Calmly turning and walking away.

Only now did he understand. That wasn't calm. It was that she had already run out of hope.

"She... where is she now?"

Tim's voice trembled.

"I have to see her!"

Abigail took the photo back and looked at him coldly.

"Do you really think she wants to see you now?"

"Tim, Denise ending up like this is all your doing."

"You'd better pray she gets better. Because if she doesn't, I won't just put you in prison. I'll make you live in regret for the rest of your life."

With that, Abigail was done with him. She turned and walked away.

Tim stood alone in the library, books all around him.

He bolted out of the library and hailed a cab straight to the city mental health center.