Chương 2
Her sleeve slid toward her shoulder.
White tape showed in the bend of her arm.
Not tape.
A medical dressing.
Next to it was the yellowing bruise of an IV.
I crouched before she could pull the sleeve down.
“What is that?”
She covered it.
“Nothing.”
“That is not nothing.”
Paige spoke behind me.
“She’s been going to clinics all the time.”
I stood.
“For what?”
“Anxiety, probably.”
Gwen made a sound that was almost a laugh.
There was no humor in it.
Margaret’s jaw tightened.
I looked from one woman to the other.
Nobody spoke.
Then I did something that surprised even me.
I smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because three months earlier, during a field interrogation exercise, Captain Morris had told me that people preparing to protect a lie usually feared bad news more than good news.
So give them good news.
Let greed do the talking.
“I actually came home because something changed,” I said.
Margaret blinked.
“What changed?”
“My compensation package.”
Paige lowered her wineglass.
I shrugged as casually as I could manage.
“Deployment adjustments, retention benefits, back pay, some other stuff I still don’t completely understand.”
“How much?” Paige asked.
Margaret shot her a glance.
Paige lifted one shoulder.
“What?”
I looked at Gwen.
She was staring at me now.
I hoped she would understand from my face that I was doing something deliberate.
I had no idea whether she did.
“Close to four hundred thousand.”
Paige’s lips parted.
Margaret did not react as quickly, but I saw her thumb stop rubbing the edge of one bracelet.
“Four hundred?” she said.
“Nearly.”
“Cash?”
“Some of it.”
Paige laughed.
“Jesus Christ, Danny.”
“Don’t call him that,” Margaret said automatically.
It was such an ordinary family correction that for half a second I was eighteen again, coming home muddy from football practice.
Then Gwen swayed.
I caught her this time.
She did not pull away because she did not have the strength.
Her body weighed almost nothing against my arm.
“When did you eat?” I asked.
“This morning.”
“What?”
“A piece of toast.”
Paige groaned.
“She does this.”
I looked at her.
“Does what?”
“Makes everything look worse when somebody’s watching.”
Gwen stepped out of my arm and steadied herself against the basin.
“I’m going inside.”
Margaret’s voice sharpened.
“You haven’t finished those.”
“I’ll do them later.”
“You said that yesterday.”
I waited for Gwen to answer.
She did not.
Something inside me went cold.
Not hot.
Cold.
“I’ll finish the dishes,” I said.
Margaret laughed.
“Daniel, stop.”
“I said I’ll finish them.”
“You just got home.”
“Exactly.”
Paige lifted her glass toward me.
“You are being weird.”
“Jet lag.”
“You came from Germany, not Jupiter.”
“Still weird.”
That made her laugh, and the sound released some of the pressure in the yard.
Margaret smiled too.
Gwen did not.
She went through the back door with one hand pressed against her side.
I watched her disappear down the hallway.
Margaret touched my shoulder.
“Come see the house.”
The pride in her voice was unmistakable.
She showed me the kitchen first.
New cabinets.
New counters.
A six-burner stove.
A coffee machine that cost more than my first used car.
She explained each improvement as though I had been asking for them.
The living room had a sectional the size of a military tent and a television mounted above a white stone fireplace.
Paige had converted the old dining room into what she called a content room, with a ring light, shelves of cosmetics, and a pink velvet chair.
“Brand work,” she said.
“You do brand work?”
“I’m building it.”
“That means no,” Margaret said.
Paige flipped her off.
For several minutes they argued about whether forty-two thousand followers counted as a business.
I let them.
People volunteered more when they believed you were distracted.
Margaret mentioned a contractor.
Paige mentioned a trip to Miami.
Then she mentioned the truck outside.
“Mom hates driving it.”
“It’s too large,” Margaret said.
“You bought it?”
Paige grinned.
“Technically, you did.”
Margaret frowned at her.
Paige’s grin disappeared.
I pretended not to notice.
“Where’s Gwen’s room?”
The silence lasted less than a second.
Margaret pointed upstairs.
“She moves around.”
“What does that mean?”
“She likes privacy.”
I started toward the stairs.
Margaret caught my wrist.
“Before you get settled, we should talk about the four hundred thousand.”
There it was.
Not Gwen’s weight.
Not her shaved head.
Not the medical dressing.
The money.
I looked down at my mother’s hand until she let go.
“What about it?”
“You said you need to prove ownership.”
“Properties and investments in my name.”
Her face brightened.
“Well, that shouldn’t be difficult.”
“You have records?”
“Of course.”
“What kind?”
“Everything.”
Paige leaned against the kitchen island.
“Mom keeps every receipt she’s ever touched.”
“That is not true.”
“You have a receipt from a vacuum cleaner you returned in 2019.”
“It was a good vacuum cleaner.”
“You returned it because it sounded haunted.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Then I remembered Gwen in the yard.
“I’ll need bank statements too,” I said.
Margaret hesitated.
“Why?”
“For verification.”
“Your military people need our bank statements?”
“They need to trace what I own.”
I let that sit.
Paige was already nodding as if it made sense.
Margaret was not.
She had always been harder to fool.
“How soon?” she asked.
“Tomorrow would be good.”
“What happens after that?”
“Then the payment gets released.”
Paige straightened.
“How long does that take?”
“A few days.”
She looked at Margaret.
That look told me more than either of them realized.
Hope, calculation, and something close to panic moved across my mother’s face before she covered it with a smile.
“We’ll find everything,” Margaret said.
“I knew you would.”
That night, after a dinner Gwen barely touched, I discovered she was not sleeping upstairs at all.
May you like
Her bed was in the storage room behind the laundry area.
There were cardboard boxes stacked against one wall, a dehumidifier that rattled every few minutes, and a narrow mattress pushed beneath a shelf of Christmas decorations.
