At the back of the drawer, behind the old tax folders and the medical receipts, sat a thick manila envelope tied with a faded red string. I untied the knot slowly, my fingers cold against the paper.
Inside were the eighty-four pages of our divorce decree, finalized six years ago when Dustin was twelve. I flipped past the custody schedules and the division of our old Chevrolet to the section marked Section Four: Educational Obligations.
My eyes scanned the legal phrasing, searching for the specific terminology we had argued over in the mediator’s office for three days.
There it was, near the bottom of page twelve, written in clean, unyielding type. Both parties shall contribute equally to all post-secondary educational expenses, matching dollar for dollar any funds held in the joint savings account.
The signature on our divorce papers looked thin and sharp, like a promise waiting to tear.
The fluorescent lights of the Oak Creek Public Library hummed, casting a pale glare over the three separate letters from Michigan State University spread across our oak table. My mother, Joyce, adjusted her reading glasses, her hands steady as she pulled the twelve thousand four hundred dollar invoice closer to her side.
“The boy has his heart set on those engineering labs, Cara,” Joyce said, her voice dropping to a low murmur as a librarian wheeled a cart of books past our small alcove. “But these figures don’t add up to a solid floor.”
I took off my glasses and began polishing them with the edge of my blue sweater, my fingers moving in tight, nervous circles over the lenses. “The university wants the first payment installment by the fifteenth of September, which is exactly twenty-one days from today. Stephen told me he signed the parent loan documents last Tuesday and mailed them directly to the office in East Lansing.”
