The name the neighbor gave me was Nadine’s grandson, Tyler. I knew him because he hadn’t spoken to the family in years. I called him that night and asked why he was paying for Woodland Ridge. He went quiet, then said, “Because your husband asked me to.” I asked how much he’d been paying. He said every month since November. Then he told me something else: Nadine hadn’t disappeared at all. My husband had moved her into the facility himself and told everyone she wanted privacy. The deposits I’d been giving him weren’t going toward her care. They were going somewhere else.
I went straight to Woodland Ridge the next morning. Nadine was sitting by the window when I walked in. She looked thinner, but when she saw me, she smiled. “I wondered how long it would take you to come,” she said. I asked why she hadn’t called me. She said my husband told her I was angry with her and didn’t want anything to do with her. Then she reached into her nightstand and pulled out a small envelope. Inside were copies of every payment I’d made over the last four years. None of them had gone to her assisted-living account. At the bottom was a handwritten note from my husband saying he would “handle everything.”
I drove home with the envelope on the passenger seat and waited for him to come back. When he finally walked through the door, I put the papers on the table. He didn’t touch them. I asked him where the money had gone. He sat down and admitted he’d been using it to pay debts he’d never told me about. But there was one payment he couldn’t explain — a large transfer made the same week Nadine moved into Woodland Ridge. The recipient was a woman I’d never heard of. I asked who she was. My husband finally looked up and said, “She’s the reason I couldn’t let you find out where your mother-in-law really was.”
