Mountain to Mountain by Shannon Galpin

Author:Shannon Galpin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466847057
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

8

Financial Fear

Colorado 2010

Several weeks later, I took Devon to get groceries, and for the first time in a long time, I was truly scared. I had $42 in cash and $21 in my bank account. We were out of almost everything, including toilet paper, milk, bread—the necessities. How had I gotten this close to the wire? As we pulled into the City Market parking lot, I told her brightly, “Sweetie, we are only going to grab a few things, okay? So please, let’s just get the things we need, and we’ll come back later for the other stuff. Okay?”

I opened the back of the Element to get the shopping bags, and she grabbed my hand. “Okay, Mommy. I just want to get my gummy vitamins.”

At eighteen bucks a bottle, that would be nearly half our grocery money.

“Sorry, baby, not today, we’ll get them next trip okay?”

“But I’m out. We need to get these.”

I sighed and grabbed her for a hug. “I know, sweetie. Next trip, okay? Can you just come with and help me get the other stuff for now?”

“Okay,” she said, frowning slightly as she took my hand. This was not what I had in mind when I said I wanted to do the best for Devon. My nerves were fried, and I could feel myself becoming short and distracted with her—something I needed to rectify. None of this was her fault.

“Race you?” I challenged her, smiling. We ran across the parking lot, her rain boots stomping through puddles of melting snow, and her infectious giggle made me laugh out loud. My heart pounding, I bent down before we entered the store. I gave her a kiss as I told her, “I love you so so so much.”

“All the way to the moon?” she asked.

“All the way to the moon and back again!” I assured her. “Now, let’s go buy some toilet paper.”

As I stood in the checkout line, I went through my mental survival checklist. I had meetings in Denver this week, important ones with potential donors that I couldn’t miss. I had several projects ready to launch but as of yet hadn’t secured the funding to put them into action. Luckily I had half a tank of gas, so if I conserved, which meant staying close to home this weekend with Devon, I should be good to go.

I’d been here before when I first separated from Pete. I left the marriage with a couple hundred dollars in my bank account. He was not in a mindset to help me with the logistics of separation, and since we had our own accounts, I had no cushion to fall back on to help me break away. He had insisted that if I wanted out, I was free to go, but he wasn’t going to support it or make it easier for me to leave.

So I took out a personal loan using the only possession I could take freely from the marriage until our divorce went through—my car. Leveraging it

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