Chương 5
At the attorney’s name, his expression changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“Don’t do anything before we talk.”
I thought of Grandma teaching me to keep receipts.
I thought of her locked desk.
I thought of Dad pulling at the drawer three days after she died.
“What are you afraid I’ll do?”
He looked past me toward the grave.
When he answered, his voice had become quiet.
“Find out what she did.”
“What she did,” I repeated.
Dad looked toward the cemetery workers, who were pretending not to watch us while waiting beside the lowering machine.
His voice dropped.
“She made decisions when she was angry.”
“About you?”
“About everybody.”
“That isn’t what the letter said.”
“The letter was written to punish me.”
He rubbed his forehead and looked suddenly older than he had inside the church.
For a second, I saw the man who used to fall asleep in Grandma’s recliner after Thanksgiving dinner with his belt loosened and one sock halfway off.
Then he looked at me again, and the softness disappeared.
“You have Margaret’s number?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I almost laughed.
“You think Grandma’s attorney is going to be difficult to find?”
“I think you should hear me before you hear somebody who billed my mother two hundred dollars every time she got upset.”
“You don’t know what Margaret billed her.”
“I know more about this than you do.”
“That’s becoming obvious.”
Dad’s lips pressed together.
Behind him, the cemetery crew began moving equipment closer.
One of the men removed his baseball cap and held it against his chest until Dad finally stepped away from the grave.
“I’ll call you tonight,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“Emily.”
“I mean it.”
He stared at me long enough to make the old instinct rise in my body, the one that wanted to soften whatever I had said until his face relaxed.
Grandma’s last note sat between us even though Pastor Daniel had already folded it away.
Do not rescue him either.
“I’m going home,” I said.
“To her house?”
The question came too quickly.
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be there alone.”
“I’ve been there alone all week.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Nothing.”
I watched him walk toward the parking lot.
He had always walked fast when conversations stopped going his way.
At Grandma’s house, I changed out of my funeral clothes and stood in the kitchen wearing sweatpants and one of her old university T-shirts because I had forgotten to bring anything else.
The shirt had belonged to my grandfather and came nearly to my knees.
I made tea the way Grandma had taught me, warmed the pot first, and then forgot to drink it.
My phone filled with messages.
Some were from relatives asking whether I was okay.
Two were from people I had not spoken to since high school who had apparently heard about the funeral from their mothers.
Beth sent, What the actual hell happened in that church?
I typed a response, deleted it, and put the phone facedown.
There was a casserole in the refrigerator with no name on it.
I ate three bites standing at the counter and decided whoever had made it believed black pepper was a dangerous narcotic.
The normality of disliking someone’s casserole steadied me more than anything else had.
At four-thirty, the doorbell rang.
I froze.
Dad had a key.
At least he had once.
The bell rang again.
Through the glass beside the door, I saw Aunt Caroline’s gray hair and opened it.
She was holding a grocery bag and looking irritated.
“I brought sandwiches.”
“There’s food.”
“There’s always food after a funeral and none of it is food.”
She pushed past me.
Caroline unpacked turkey sandwiches, potato chips, two bottles of root beer, and a package of chocolate-covered pretzels.
“You bought this at a gas station.”
“Yes.”
“You drove past three grocery stores.”
“I didn’t want groceries.”
I sat at the table.
She put a sandwich in front of me and took the chair across from mine.
For a while, we ate without speaking.
The refrigerator hummed.
A dog barked somewhere down the block.
Caroline wiped mustard from her thumb with a paper napkin.
“Your grandmother could be a spectacular coward.”
I stopped chewing.
That was not what I expected her to say.
Caroline took another bite.
“People will make her into Florence Nightingale for six months because she’s dead.”
“She wasn’t a coward.”
“Oh, yes, she was.”
I stared at her.
“When?”
“With John.”
She said his name without calling him my father.
“She kept paying because money was easier than conflict.”
“That doesn’t make her a coward.”
“It made her human.”
Caroline folded the sandwich wrapper into a narrow strip.
“I told her to stop helping him years ago.”
“Did you know about the house?”
“Not all of it.”
“What did you know?”
“That she had put something up for collateral.”
My appetite disappeared.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
Caroline looked genuinely confused.
“Why would I tell you?”
“Because I was helping her.”
“You were twenty-six when this started, Emily.”
“I could have done something.”
“That sentence right there is the problem.”
She pointed at me with half a potato chip.
“Everybody in this family sees you carrying three bags and decides your hands must be free enough for a fourth.”
I looked away.
Outside the window, the neighbor across the alley was dragging a trash can toward his garage.
“I should have known.”
“No.”
“She was scared.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody did anything.”
“Your grandmother did something.”
“Eventually.”
Caroline gave me a tired look.
“People don’t become wise just because they turn eighty.”
I picked at the edge of my napkin.
“Dad said I shouldn’t talk to Margaret until I talked to him.”
Caroline’s eyebrows rose.
“Well, there’s a glowing recommendation for calling Margaret immediately.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Then Caroline’s face became serious.
“Call her tomorrow morning.”
May you like
“Do you know her?”
“I met her twice.”
