Chương 2
“What does that mean?” he asked.
My father rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Not here.”
I almost smiled.
Hospitals had become my family’s preferred location for deciding what could not be discussed in hospitals.
“Where would you like to do it?” I asked.
“Maybe beside the gift shop?”
“Clara.”
“The cafeteria has terrible coffee, but apparently excellent privacy.”
My father’s shoulders sagged.
“We paid cash.”
Daniel stared through the glass.
“What?”
“For the house.”
His voice was barely audible.
“You told me there was a mortgage.”
“We didn’t want you feeling obligated.”
Daniel’s expression changed slowly.
He looked at our mother.
“How much?”
“Dan, this is not helping you.”
“How much?”
She folded her arms.
“Two hundred and eighty-six.”
The number entered me cleanly.
Two hundred and eighty-six thousand dollars.
For three years, I had assumed they had given him enough for a down payment, perhaps forty thousand, perhaps sixty.
I had hated them for an amount I had invented because the truth had seemed too obscene to imagine.
Daniel pressed the receiver harder against his ear.
“You had that much cash?”
My mother’s chin lifted.
“It was from selling your grandfather’s property.”
“The property in Medina?”
“Yes.”
“You told Clara there was nothing.”
My mother’s face hardened.
“This is exactly why we did not discuss finances with the two of you.”
I could almost admire the sentence.
It took skill to turn concealment into etiquette.
Daniel looked at me.
“Clare, I swear to God, I thought they were helping with a mortgage.”
“You still knew they were helping you while Lily needed money.”
“Yes.”
The word came without defense.
That hurt worse.
I put the receiver back in its cradle.
Daniel immediately called again.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
My mother reached for it.
I stepped away.
“Clara, listen to him.”
“I did.”
“You heard him admit he made a mistake.”
“No, I heard him admit he knew.”
“He was starting his life.”
The words came out before she could stop them.
My father shut his eyes.
I stared at her.
Behind the glass, Daniel went completely still.
My mother’s lips parted.
“That is not what I meant.”
Nobody rescued her.
A respiratory therapist pushed a cart past us, murmured excuse me, and disappeared into another room.
Somewhere down the hall, a child complained that the vending machine had stolen his dollar.
The world continued with insulting efficiency.
I touched the zipper of my bag.
Inside it was a purple plastic hair clip I had carried for three years.
Lily had dropped it in my purse during one of her appointments and never asked for it back.
I had never been able to throw it away.
My mother whispered my name.
“I know exactly what you meant.”
Her eyes filled.
“Please don’t punish Daniel for what we did.”
That was the first honest thing she had said.
It stopped me.
My father looked at her, then at me.
Daniel’s phone began ringing again.
Nobody answered it.
I stood there with my hand on my bag and discovered that revenge was simpler when the person suffering had done nothing except inherit the benefit of somebody else’s cruelty.
Except Daniel had known.
Not everything, perhaps, but enough.
Enough to ask where the money came from.
Enough to call me.
Enough to notice that his niece was disappearing while contractors painted his guest bedrooms.
He had chosen not to look too closely because looking closely might have cost him something.
I knew that kind of cowardice.
For three years, I had told coworkers my parents and I had “grown apart.”
I had told neighbors Daniel and I were “not very close.”
I had protected the clean version because the dirty one made people look at me with pity.
Dr. Shah cleared his throat.
“There may be other potential donors.”
My mother turned toward him.
“Who?”
“We are searching the registry.”
“But a sibling is better.”
“Sometimes.”
“You said siblings have the best chance.”
“I said biological siblings have a higher probability of being a full HLA match.”
She looked at me again.
Hope had returned too quickly.
I hated her for it.
“Clara, you could just take the test.”
“And if I match?”
“We deal with that then.”
“No.”
Her face collapsed.
I walked toward the elevators.
My father followed me.
He did not call my name until the doors opened.
“Your mother wanted to sell the house.”
I turned.
He stood ten feet away, hands hanging uselessly at his sides.
“What?”
“After Lily got worse.”
My mother appeared behind him.
“Richard.”
He ignored her.
“She wanted to ask Daniel for the house back.”
Daniel’s room phone rang again behind the glass.
My father looked at me with the exhausted expression of a man who had finally decided that silence was costing more than truth.
“I wouldn’t let her.”
The elevator doors started to close, and I put one hand between them before the sensors could decide for me.
My father did not move.
My mother came up beside him, pale now, her anger gone so quickly it left her looking smaller.
“What do you mean, you wouldn’t let her?”
He glanced toward Daniel’s room.
“I mean exactly that.”
My mother said, “Richard, not here.”
“That phrase has done enough work for this family.”
His voice was not loud.
That made my mother look more frightened than shouting would have.
I stepped out of the elevator.
A woman holding a paper cup leaned around us, pressed the down button twice, then gave up and walked toward another bank of elevators.
My father sat on one of the vinyl chairs without being invited.
He rubbed both palms over his knees.
“Your mother came to me after you sent the email from Boston.”
May you like
I could see that email immediately.
I had written it at two in the morning from a plastic chair beside Lily’s bed, attaching the clinic estimate, the insurance denial, the letter from Lily’s oncologist, and a spreadsheet I had made because I thought numbers might persuade people who had stopped responding to emotion.
