Chương 4
Gwen reached for my wrist.
“Not now.”
“Why?”
“If she sees you checking things, she’ll know.”
I looked toward the ceiling.
Margaret’s footsteps crossed the floor above us.
Gwen whispered, “She checks the router.”
I turned back to her.
“The router?”
“I don’t know exactly how.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“She knows when devices connect.”
“That’s normal.”
“I mean she checks mine.”
Gwen looked embarrassed even saying it.
“She made me give her my phone password after I got sick.”
“Made you?”
“She said she needed it in case I passed out.”
My jaw tightened.
“Where’s your phone?”
“She has it.”
I stood up.
Gwen grabbed my sleeve.
“Daniel.”
“I’m getting your phone.”
“No.”
“She has your phone.”
“If you go upstairs angry, everything gets worse.”
“Worse than this?”
“Yes.”
The certainty in her voice stopped me.
I sat back down.
That cost me more than standing would have.
Gwen watched my face carefully.
“She’ll say I’m turning you against her.”
“She can say whatever she wants.”
“She’ll say I’m unstable.”
“So?”
“She has messages.”
“What messages?”
“I got angry.”
Gwen looked away.
“I said things.”
“To her?”
“To Paige too.”
“What kind of things?”
“I said I wished they would both disappear.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“I said worse than that.”
I waited.
She swallowed.
“I said sometimes I wished I were dead.”
The sentence settled between us without spectacle.
I did not touch her immediately.
I had learned that touching someone too fast could sometimes make them feel managed instead of heard.
“When?” I asked.
“After the biopsy.”
“Do you still feel that way?”
“No.”
She answered quickly, then corrected herself.
“Not exactly.”
I stayed quiet.
“I don’t want to die,” she said.
“I’m scared I already waited too long.”
That was different.
It was also worse.
I put my hand over hers.
“Tomorrow we go to the hospital.”
“She’ll know.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
I started to argue.
Gwen squeezed my hand.
“You asked me to hold on a little longer.”
I looked at her.
“I need you to do the same.”
That silenced me.
For all my training, all my imagined competence, I had arrived home less than twelve hours earlier and already wanted to kick open every locked door in the house.
Gwen had survived five months by learning which doors not to touch.
“I need records,” I said.
She nodded.
“Bank records?”
“All of it.”
“There’s a filing cabinet in your mother’s room.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“She keeps household documents there.”
“Locked?”
“Yes.”
“Key?”
“On her key ring, usually.”
I exhaled through my nose.
“Anything online?”
“Probably.”
“Do you know where she keeps passwords?”
“No.”
“Paige?”
Gwen almost smiled.
“Paige’s password is probably Paige.”
Despite everything, a laugh escaped me.
It felt obscene in that room.
Then Gwen laughed too.
Only once.
She covered her mouth as if the sound might travel upstairs.
I had forgotten how much I loved the way she laughed when she was trying not to.
For one second she looked like herself.
Then the moment passed.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, “I ask Mom for every document she can produce.”
“She’ll give you clean ones.”
“Probably.”
“So what does that help?”
“It tells me what she wants me to see.”
Gwen studied me.
“That sounds like something the Army teaches.”
“No.”
I leaned back against the wall.
“That’s something my mother taught me.”
Margaret had always been excellent at controlling the first version of a story.
When my father drank too much, she told relatives he was tired.
When Paige wrecked the family car at seventeen, Margaret had me tell the insurance company I had been driving because Paige already had points on her license.
I had done it.
My father had stared at me across the kitchen afterward and said, “One day you’re going to confuse helping this family with lying for it.”
At twenty, I had thought he was being bitter.
At thirty-four, sitting beside my sick wife in a storage room, I finally heard him correctly.
Gwen lay down without changing clothes.
I switched off the bulb.
Neither of us slept much.
At six fifteen the next morning, the smell of coffee came through the wall.
Margaret was already awake.
Gwen’s breathing had finally deepened beside me.
I left her sleeping and went upstairs.
My mother stood in the kitchen wearing a robe, reading something on her tablet.
She looked up and smiled.
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Habit.”
“There’s coffee.”
I poured a cup.
My hands were steady.
That reassured me less than it should have.
Margaret tapped the tablet screen off.
“I was thinking about what you said yesterday.”
“I figured.”
“The benefit package.”
“Yeah.”
“There may be a complication.”
I took a sip.
The coffee was stronger than I remembered.
“What complication?”
“Some of the assets aren’t technically in your name yet.”
“Which ones?”
“The truck.”
“I don’t care about the truck.”
“The renovation financing.”
I lowered the mug.
“What renovation financing?”
Margaret’s eyes shifted toward the hallway.
“Nothing alarming.”
“That phrase usually means alarming.”
She gave me the patient smile she had used when I was a teenager.
“We needed flexibility while you were overseas.”
“You said the renovations were paid for.”
“Most were.”
“With what?”
“Your money.”
“And the rest?”
“A line of credit.”
“Against what?”
“The house.”
I stared at her.
The house had belonged to my father.
After he died, title transferred to Margaret, with a provision in his will giving me a partial interest once the old mortgage was satisfied.
I had never cared.
It was home.
Family property.
Something permanent.
“How much?”
Margaret picked up her coffee.
“About sixty.”
“Sixty what?”
“Thousand.”
I set my mug down carefully.
“For renovations?”
“And expenses.”
“What expenses?”
“You’ve been gone four years, Daniel.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Her shoulders tightened.
“We lived.”
I looked around the remodeled kitchen.
“Yes.”
She heard the meaning.
Her expression cooled.
“Be careful.”
“About what?”
May you like
“Coming home and judging things you weren’t here to manage.”
There she was.
