Chương 5
“I changed my mind.”
“Well, that’s helpful.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
That answer seemed to calm her more than confidence would have.
“Are you kicking us out?”
There it was.
The real question.
“I haven’t decided how this is going to work.”
“Brittany says you’re going to.”
“Brittany says a lot.”
“We don’t have money.”
“You’ve had months to save.”
“That’s not fair.”
I almost laughed.
Instead, I looked at the dark reflection of myself in Marcus’s window.
My warehouse polo was wrinkled.
My eyes looked sunken.
There was a dried smear of grease near my sleeve from the frying pan I had taken out of Emily’s hands.
“No,” I said.
“It probably isn’t.”
Kayla waited.
“But neither is what happened to Emily.”
“She could’ve said no.”
“She did.”
“She didn’t say it to me.”
“She shouldn’t have needed four separate negotiations to sit down in her own home.”
“That’s not what it was like.”
“Then what was it like?”
Kayla had no answer.
Someone moved on her end.
A door clicked.
Then my mother’s voice, faint but unmistakable, said something I could not make out.
Kayla whispered, “I have to go.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“The folder.”
“What about it?”
“Do not let anyone throw anything away.”
She gave a nervous laugh.
“You think Mom’s going to start burning documents?”
I did not answer.
The laugh disappeared.
“Okay,” she said.
The call ended.
I stood by the window for another minute.
Then I opened my banking app again.
I checked every account I knew about.
Checking.
Savings.
Credit card.
Car loan.
Nothing connected to my grandfather.
Nothing unfamiliar.
I searched my email for his full name.
Dozens of old messages appeared.
Family photos.
Funeral arrangements.
A forwarded obituary.
Then one email from six years earlier caught my eye.
It had been sent by a law office.
The subject line read, Estate of Walter James Cole.
I opened it.
The message was brief.
It asked me to contact the office regarding a beneficiary matter.
Below it was my reply.
Thanks, my mother is handling everything for the family.
Please communicate with her directly.
I sat down on the edge of Marcus’s couch.
For a moment, I could not feel my hands.
I remembered the week after Grandpa died.
I remembered working double shifts.
I remembered Teresa telling me there was nothing complicated in the estate.
She had said Grandpa left some personal belongings, an old Buick, and enough money to cover funeral costs.
I had believed her because she was my mother.
I had handed her authority without paperwork, without questions, without even calling the lawyer back.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
Emily stood in the hallway holding the doorframe.
“What are you doing?”
I locked the phone instinctively.
She saw it.
Her face changed.
“Ethan.”
“I found something.”
“What?”
I looked at the closed screen in my hand.
My first impulse was to protect her from one more problem.
That instinct had already cost us enough.
“There may have been money my grandfather left me.”
Her eyebrows drew together.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know that either.”
She came into the living room slowly and lowered herself onto the couch beside me.
“Who does?”
I looked at her.
“My mother.”
Emily did not speak for several seconds.
She reached for my phone.
I handed it to her.
She read the old email, then my reply beneath it.
Her thumb stopped on the line where I had told the law office to communicate with Teresa.
“You gave her permission.”
“Apparently.”
“Did you sign anything?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Would you remember?”
I looked at her.
“That sounded worse than you meant it.”
“No, it didn’t.”
She handed the phone back.
“You were working all the time even then.”
“My mom was helping with everything after the funeral.”
“You trusted her.”
“I still do.”
The words came out automatically.
Emily’s expression changed.
Not sharply.
Just enough.
I rubbed my jaw.
“No.”
I corrected myself.
“I trusted her.”
That was closer.
A kettle clicked somewhere in Marcus and Renee’s kitchen, and a second later Renee appeared wearing slippers and holding two mugs.
She stopped when she saw us awake.
“Oh.”
“Sorry,” Emily said.
“You’re apologizing for sitting on my couch?”
Renee handed her one of the mugs.
“It’s chamomile.”
Then she looked at me.
“You get water.”
“Why?”
“Because you already look like you’re vibrating.”
She disappeared back into the kitchen.
Emily wrapped both hands around the mug.
Steam touched her face.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m calling that law office when they open.”
“What if it doesn’t exist anymore?”
“Then I’ll find whoever handled the records.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know.”
She gave me a tired look.
“That answer again.”
“It’s the only honest one I have.”
She nodded.
I appreciated that she did not try to comfort me.
Comfort would have felt insulting.
At five thirty, Marcus shuffled into the living room and stopped beside the couch.
He looked from Emily to me.
“You two sleep?”
“She did.”
“I did not.”
“Great.”
He scratched the side of his head.
“You’re both banned from adulthood until breakfast.”
Emily smiled into her tea.
Marcus walked to the kitchen.
“Renee, they’re doing crisis management before sunrise.”
“I can hear them.”
“Should we confiscate their phones?”
“Yes.”
I put mine face down.
“Everybody’s a comedian.”
Marcus came back with a banana and tossed it into my lap.
“Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s apparently contagious.”
Emily looked at me.
I peeled the banana.
By seven, the apartment had begun waking around us.
Pipes knocked in the walls.
A garbage truck groaned in the alley.
Someone upstairs dropped something heavy enough to make Marcus look at the ceiling and say, “Every morning, I swear they rebuild a motorcycle.”
For twenty minutes, nobody discussed my family.
Renee made eggs.
May you like
Emily ate half a bagel and then, under Renee’s supervision, the other half.
Marcus complained about a fantasy football trade he had made three weeks earlier and still regretted.
