Her Bargain Rental Favor

“Three hundred dollars for rent just went through. Thanks, Claire.”

A text popped up on Claire’s phone from a contact saved as “Mark.”

I grabbed the phone before she could react and froze.

“Rent?” I asked. “You’ve been telling me every month that money was from your side job.”

Her face went stiff. She reached for the phone, trying to take it back.

“He was my sister Emily’s husband,” Claire said quickly. “After Emily died, he was left with two kids. I was only trying to help.”

My hand brushed against the anniversary gift in my pocket, and something inside me went cold.

“Which apartment is he paying rent for?”

Her lips parted, but it took her a long time to answer.

When she finally did, she gave me the name of a neighborhood.

My ears rang.

It was the downtown apartment my parents had left me. A spacious unit that could rent for ten thousand a month at market rate.

And she had leased it to her widowed brother-in-law for the absurdly low price of three hundred dollars.

Claire Whitman tried to snatch the phone back, but in her panic, she knocked over a whole pot of beef brisket soup.

I had spent three hours making that soup.

She loved it, so every year on our wedding anniversary, it was always on the table.

“Honey, please let me explain. I didn’t mean to hide it from you.”

She stepped over the mess on the floor and hurried toward me.

“But you know my sister Emily passed away three years ago. She left Mark with a son and a daughter.

“He doesn’t have a job, and he has to support himself and the kids. It’s been really hard for him...”

I tightened my grip on the phone and forced my voice to stay calm.

“So what exactly was your reason for keeping it from me?”

She stopped about three feet away from me.

Then she stammered, “I... I was afraid you’d misunderstand my relationship with Mark. I didn’t want to make you angry.”

I understood.

Mark had it hard, so she rented him an apartment worth ten thousand a month for only three hundred.

And I was petty and narrow-minded, so she had no choice but to hide the truth from me.

“How many years has he been renting it?”

“Three years. Since Emily died.”

“If it’s rent, then every weekend when you said you were going to help a friend with a part-time job, where were you actually going?”

Claire lowered her head, avoiding my eyes.

“To work overtime...”

“Lie again. There’s no overtime pay on any of your pay stubs.”

I tapped on the message, and the chat with Mark Lewis popped up.

Yesterday had been Sunday.

[Claire, Ben and Lily want sautéed lettuce. Can you teach me how to make it?]

She had replied within seconds.

[Mark, I’ll come over and make it for them. You’re not good in the kitchen. You might burn yourself.]

I kept