Chương 2
“I never said jealous.”
Khloe spoke without looking at Victoria. “You did. At Janet’s engagement dinner.”
“That is not what I meant.”
Janet folded her arms. “You also said Maya kept asking to move in.”
Maya stopped with one hand on the front door.
She had never asked to move in.
For a moment she considered turning around. She could correct the lie. She could ask Victoria why she had invented it. She could watch the last pieces of her sister’s polished life come loose in front of the women she had tried so hard to impress.
Instead, Maya opened the door.
The evening air smelled faintly of cut grass and someone’s charcoal grill. A child rode a scooter along the opposite sidewalk, the wheels clicking over concrete seams. A dog barked behind a fence and was immediately hushed.
Helen followed her outside.
The door had nearly closed when Victoria called, “You can’t just do this.”
Maya looked back through the narrowing space.
Victoria stood under the chandelier in her champagne satin dress, one hand braced against the marble island. The ruined cake rose between her and her friends. Frosting remained beneath one fingernail.
Maya let the door close.
Helen’s sedan was parked half a block away because the townhouse driveway had been filled with guests’ cars. They walked toward it without speaking.
Maya’s shoes pinched at the heel. She had bought them for the party because Victoria had once told her that flats made the wrap dress look “churchy.” Halfway down the block, Maya stopped, slipped them off, and carried them by the straps.
Helen waited beside her.
“I should’ve said something before tonight,” Helen said.
Maya stared at the pavement. “You said plenty.”
“I meant before.”
A couple came out of the townhouse across the street carrying reusable grocery bags. They glanced toward Maya’s bare feet and Helen’s gift, then politely looked elsewhere.
Maya resumed walking.
Helen unlocked the car. Maya climbed into the passenger seat and placed the scrapbook on her lap.
The interior smelled like peppermint gum and the lavender hand cream Helen had used for as long as Maya could remember. There were two folded grocery receipts in the cup holder and a library book on the back seat about women codebreakers during World War II.
Helen started the engine but did not pull away.
“Did you know she was telling people that?” Maya asked.
“Some of it.”
“How much?”
Helen adjusted the rearview mirror though nothing behind them required checking.
“I knew she let people believe the house was entirely her doing.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Maya waited.
Helen’s bracelet clicked softly against the steering wheel. “I heard her say you were having financial trouble. That she was helping you.”
Maya looked at her.
“When?”
“Christmas. At the Millers’ party.”
“Last Christmas?”
Helen nodded.
Maya remembered the Millers’ party. She had not attended because she had worked late and then driven across town to fix Victoria’s garbage disposal. The motor had hummed without turning. Maya had reached into the cabinet with a flashlight between her teeth and found a champagne cork lodged inside.
Victoria had watched from the doorway and complained that the kitchen smelled like old onions.
“What did you say?” Maya asked.
“I told her not to be ridiculous.”
“In front of anyone?”
Helen’s silence answered.
Maya looked down at the scrapbook. A small gold thread had come loose near the spine. She wound it once around her finger.
“You corrected her privately.”
“Yes.”
“So she got to keep the lie.”
“I thought humiliating her would make things worse.”
Maya gave a tired laugh. “That worked out.”
Helen turned off the engine.
The sudden quiet made the ticking of the cooling dashboard seem loud.
“I was wrong,” she said.
Maya pressed her lips together. She wanted the admission to feel like comfort. Instead it opened a second ache beside the first.
“You always tell me to be patient with her.”
“I know.”
“You told me she needed time after college. Then after the breakup. Then after she changed jobs. Then after she bought the house.”
“I know.”
“You told me Mom would want us to stay close.”
Helen looked through the windshield at the gold balloons visible in Victoria’s upper windows.
“I used your mother against you,” she said. “Not intentionally. But I did.”
Maya’s fingers stopped moving around the loose thread.
Helen rarely apologized without attaching a practical repair. When Maya was seventeen and Helen forgot her school concert, she arrived the next morning with a new music stand and a list of three dates marked in red on her calendar. When she backed into Maya’s first car, she paid for the repair before Maya knew the bumper had been damaged.
This apology had nowhere to go.
Maya turned toward the passenger window.
A shadow crossed Victoria’s front curtain. Someone inside laughed once, abruptly, then stopped.
“My transfer goes out in nine days,” Maya said.
“Not anymore.”
“What if she can’t make the payment?”
Helen did not answer immediately.
“That would be a consequence,” she said.
“It would be foreclosure.”
“Not in nine days.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. I also know she earns more than you think.”
Maya turned back. “How much more?”
“I don’t know the number.”
“Then what do you know?”
“That she got a promotion last year.”
“She told me it was a title change.”
“It came with a raise.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
Maya stared at her aunt.
Helen’s expression changed—not defensiveness exactly, but the guarded look of someone realizing that honesty had arrived too late to appear innocent.
“When?” Maya asked.
“February.”
“Eighteen months ago?”
“Yes.”
May you like
Maya looked down at the banking app still open on her phone. The cancellation notice remained on the screen.
For eighteen months she had sent Victoria $1,200 on the first of every month. She had paid the electric bill, the water bill, the homeowners insurance, and half the annual property tax shortage after Victoria’s escrow adjustment. She had declined a trip to Oregon with two coworkers because the airfare was “not sensible right now.” She had replaced her laptop with a refurbished model that overheated during video calls. She had renewed the lease on her one-bedroom apartment because a down payment remained something she would consider next year.
