"It's not just the washer," she said. "I mean, it is the washer. But it's not just that. My dad stopped paying support in April. He says his practice is having a hard year. Mom has a lawyer, but the lawyer costs money too. And in June..." She stopped.
"You don't have to tell me," I said.
"I want somebody to know," she said. "In June, Mom got laid off. Her whole department. They merged with a company in Hartford and they kept the Hartford people. She gets dressed every morning and she leaves the house at seven-fifteen and she drives to the Panera in Polaris and sits there with her laptop applying to jobs until five. I know because I followed her once on my bike. I didn't tell her I know. She doesn't know I know." Hesper's voice wobbled for the first time. "She's been putting the house payments on a credit card. She's been doing the HOA stuff every night until midnight because it's the only thing she still has that she's in charge of. If people found out, if Mrs. Quarrington found out, she'd lose that too. Mrs. Quarrington's been trying to get her off the board for two years."
So that was it. That was the eleven hundred dollars that could not be spent on a washer and dryer. That was a woman carrying sacks of wet laundry to a basement to hang on a rack so that no one at the laundromat on Cherry Street would see her and start to wonder.
"So I asked Dash," Hesper said. "Because he's the only person I tell things to. And he said, My mom works late on Tuesdays. And I said, Your mom can't know. And he said okay."
I looked at my son.
"Why couldn't I know?" I asked. I asked it quietly. I already suspected the answer. I just needed to hear it.
Dashiell looked at Hesper. Hesper looked at me.