Chương 2
“I bought this place before your offer was accepted.”
That stopped her.
She stared at me.
“How long?”
“I closed five weeks ago.”
Mom’s expression changed again.
“You helped Jenna move while you owned this?”
“Yes.”
“You gave her money.”
Jenna’s head snapped toward Mom.
“What?”
Mom froze.
I put my cup down.
Apparently my anonymous gift had not remained anonymous.
“What money?” Jenna asked.
Mom rubbed her forehead.
“Nothing.”
“What money, Mom?”
“The thousand dollars.”
Jenna looked at me.
“You put that in the drawer?”
I wished suddenly that I hadn’t.
Not because I regretted helping her, but because the gesture now sat on the table between us like evidence of moral superiority.
“That wasn’t supposed to come up.”
“Why would you do that?”
“You said the moving costs were worse than you expected.”
“So?”
“So I had it.”
Her face flushed.
“I don’t need your charity.”
“I know.”
“Obviously you don’t.”
“Jenna, stop.”
Mom’s voice was sharper now.
Jenna stood.
“No, she gets to sit there acting all gracious after setting this up?”
“I didn’t set anything up.”
“You let us humiliate you.”
The words came out before she seemed to understand them.
Nobody moved.
I watched her expression harden around what she had just admitted.
“You knew you had this,” she said more quietly, “and you sat at my party smiling while everybody thought you were broke.”
“I never said I was broke.”
“You wanted us to look stupid.”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us?”
I opened my mouth and discovered I didn’t have a simple answer.
Because I wanted the reveal.
Because some ugly little part of me had enjoyed knowing something they didn’t.
Because I had spent years swallowing their jokes and had wanted, just once, to watch one die in Jenna’s mouth.
But there was something else too.
“I wanted to know how you’d treat me if you thought nothing had changed.”
Jenna stared at me.
Mom went very still.
The leaf blower outside stopped.
The sudden absence of noise made the room feel larger.
Mom folded her hands on the table.
“That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“It was a terrible thing to find out.”
She stood.
“I came here because Jenna sounded hysterical.”
“You came because she told you I had a big house.”
“That is not fair.”
“Would you have come if she’d said I was lonely?”
Mom recoiled.
I regretted it immediately.
Not because it was entirely false, but because I had said it to hurt her.
Dad used to do that when arguments got bad.
He could find the one sentence nobody could defend against and place it carefully on the table.
I had hated that about him.
Now I heard him in my own voice.
“Forget I said that.”
Mom picked up her purse.
“You don’t get to say something like that and then erase it.”
“I know.”
Jenna looked between us.
For a moment she seemed almost pleased that the attention had shifted.
Then her phone buzzed.
She checked it automatically.
Whatever she saw made her expression collapse into irritation.
“I have to go.”
Mom turned.
“Already?”
“I have a contractor meeting at noon.”
She grabbed her coat from the chair.
Then she looked at me.
“Congratulations on the house.”
The words were technically correct.
Her face made them meaningless.
“Thanks.”
She walked out.
A few seconds later the front door shut hard enough to rattle the old brass mail slot.
Mom remained beside the table.
I started gathering plates because doing something with my hands felt safer than looking at her.
“You always did that,” she said.
I stopped.
“Did what?”
“Wait.”
She stared at Dad’s teapot.
“You’d wait until you were so angry nobody could fix it.”
I almost laughed at the unfairness of it.
“You think I’m the one who made this unfixable?”
“I think you’ve been keeping score.”
“So has Jenna.”
“I’m not talking about Jenna.”
“Of course not.”
Mom closed her eyes.
There it was again.
The easy cruelty.
Mine this time.
I carried the plates to the kitchen and set them beside the sink.
Mom followed slowly.
For several minutes neither of us spoke.
The refrigerator hummed.
A delivery van stopped outside, and a man in a brown jacket carried two packages toward the neighboring house.
Ordinary Tuesday morning.
Ordinary people getting things delivered.
Ordinary mothers and daughters finding new ways to disappoint each other.
Mom ran one finger along the edge of the marble island.
“Your father knew, didn’t he?”
The plate in my hand nearly slipped.
“Knew what?”
“That you were building something.”
I turned around.
She was no longer looking at me.
“He used to ask about your computer thing.”
My throat tightened.
“He called it my computer thing because he couldn’t remember the name.”
“He remembered.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“He asked me once what a user interface was.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
“That sounds like Dad.”
“He said he wanted to understand what you did before you figured out he didn’t understand any of it.”
A laugh escaped me.
It came out wrong and turned into something dangerously close to a sob.
I looked down at the sink.
Mom opened her purse and searched inside.
She pulled out a folded grocery receipt, a lipstick without its cap, two pens, and finally her keys.
“I should go.”
I nodded.
At the doorway she stopped.
“You know, Jenna’s mortgage is killing her.”
I looked up.
“What?”
Mom pressed her lips together.
“She shouldn’t have bought that townhouse.”
The anger drained out of me so quickly it left confusion behind.
“She said she put twenty percent down.”
“She said a lot of things.”
Mom opened the door.
“Don’t tell her I told you.”
Then she left.
I stood in the foyer listening to her car start.
My phone buzzed on the sunroom table.
A message from Jenna appeared.
It contained only seven words.
May you like
Don’t you dare tell anyone about this.
I read the message twice, then set the phone face down.
