Chương 16
Charlotte saw it sticking out of the backpack.
“Why are you bringing that?”
Skylar shrugged.
“Emergency food.”
Charlotte looked at her for a long second.
Then she took the cup out.
“No.”
Skylar frowned.
“What if Dad has nothing?”
“Then he can take you to buy food.”
“That could take forever.”
“Then call me.”
Skylar considered this.
“Can I bring crackers?”
“Yes.”
“Two packs?”
“Fine.”
The noodles went back into the pantry.
Gertrude’s criminal exposure became complicated because she cooperated after initially minimizing what she had done.
She eventually admitted that Curtis had told her the signature was a harmless temporary formality.
That did not absolve her.
She had known she was signing another person’s name.
Charlotte did not attend every proceeding.
She stopped wanting punishment to serve as proof of how badly she had been hurt.
Gertrude received consequences Charlotte considered both insufficient and devastating, depending on the day.
For several months she was not allowed unsupervised time with Skylar.
That hurt her more than anything else.
When Charlotte finally agreed to a supervised lunch, Gertrude arrived twenty minutes early and brought no expensive gifts.
She ordered soup.
Skylar ordered grilled cheese.
Charlotte ordered nothing because her stomach was tight.
Gertrude spent half the meal talking about Skylar’s school project.
She did not apologize until the check came.
“I thought I was saving him.”
Charlotte looked at her.
“I know.”
Gertrude’s eyes filled, but she blinked the tears back.
“I told myself you would never even know.”
“That was the problem.”
Gertrude nodded.
For once, she did not defend herself.
“I know.”
Charlotte almost smiled at the phrase.
Instead she said, “Trust is going to take longer than lunch.”
“I understand.”
“We’ll see.”
That was as much forgiveness as Charlotte could honestly offer.
Evan lost most of his investment.
He also lost Hailey for a while.
She moved out after discovering two other financial lies unrelated to Curtis.
They eventually tried again, cautiously, with separate accounts.
Charlotte thought this was either romantic or foolish and kept the opinion to herself.
Hailey deserved the right to make her own complicated decisions.
The case involving Curtis moved forward slowly.
There were searches, financial records, attorneys, delays, and arguments about what belonged to which company.
Charlotte stopped checking for updates every day.
Eventually she stopped checking every week.
The house survived.
That fact became less miraculous with time.
The roof still needed repair.
The upstairs toilet began running at night.
A kitchen drawer stuck whenever the weather was humid.
The mortgage still arrived every month with rude consistency.
Charlotte found those problems comforting.
They belonged to ordinary ownership rather than threatened ownership.
Almost a year after the seafood dinner, Brandon came over on a Saturday morning to replace a broken hinge on Skylar’s closet door.
Charlotte let him because he was good with hinges and terrible with investments.
He spent twenty minutes swearing quietly at a stripped screw.
Skylar sat on the floor beside him doing homework.
Charlotte passed the doorway carrying laundry.
“Need help?”
“No.”
Three seconds later Brandon said, “Yes.”
She brought him the better screwdriver.
He took it without comment.
His wedding ring was gone too.
They had not decided whether their separation would become permanent.
For once, neither of them was forcing an answer before they had one.
That afternoon they ate sandwiches at the dining table.
It was the same table.
Charlotte had considered replacing it after everything.
Then she decided furniture had done nothing wrong.
Skylar dropped a pickle onto her plate.
“Grandma says she might come to my science thing.”
Charlotte glanced at Brandon.
“She asked me first,” he said.
“Good.”
Skylar looked between them.
“Can she?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said.
Skylar smiled.
Brandon reached for a potato chip.
Then he stopped.
“I got an email from Marisol’s office.”
Charlotte’s body tightened automatically.
“What?”
“They don’t need anything from me.”
“Oh.”
“It was just an update.”
He ate the chip.
Charlotte waited.
“What update?”
“Curtis took a plea agreement.”
She put down her sandwich.
Brandon looked at the table.
“It includes the document fraud.”
Charlotte felt something she had expected to feel like triumph.
It did not.
It felt like a door closing somewhere far away.
“Okay.”
“That’s it?”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know.”
He gave a faint smile.
“Neither do I.”
Skylar looked up from her sandwich.
“Who is Curtis?”
Charlotte and Brandon both stared at her.
Skylar frowned.
“What?”
Brandon laughed first.
Charlotte joined him.
The laughter lasted longer than the question deserved.
Skylar rolled her eyes.
“Adults are weird.”
“Yes,” Charlotte said.
“That part is true.”
After lunch, Brandon finished the hinge and left before dinner.
Skylar went outside to ride her bike with Mrs. Alvarez’s granddaughter.
Charlotte cleared the table alone.
She found an old instant-noodle cup pushed behind a box of pasta in the pantry.
She held it for a moment.
There was nothing symbolic about it.
It was expired.
She threw it away.
Then she took the black tote from the chair and emptied it because she had been meaning to clean it for months.
At the bottom were two old receipts, a dry pen, a hair tie, three mints, and a folded copy of the document release Marisol had given her.
Charlotte unfolded the paper.
Her name appeared several times.
This time every signature on it was real.
She read none of the legal language.
She folded it again and placed it in the safe.
When she came back downstairs, Skylar had returned and was standing in the kitchen with dirty knees and a serious expression.
“Can we order pancakes?”
Charlotte looked at the clock.
“For dinner?”
“Yes.”
“With bacon?”
“Yes.”
“Orange juice?”
Charlotte opened the refrigerator.
There was half a carton on the shelf.
“We already have orange juice.”
Skylar considered this.
“Then extra pancakes.”
Charlotte picked up her phone.
“Deal.”
Skylar sat at the table while Charlotte placed the order.
No one sat on the floor.
No one whispered about who was allowed to eat what.
No papers waited beneath anybody’s plate.
When Charlotte finished, she set the phone down and looked at her daughter across the scratched dark wood.
Outside, somebody started a lawnmower.
The upstairs toilet began running again.
Skylar complained that delivery would take thirty-eight minutes.
May you like
Charlotte told her she would survive.
Then they sat there together, hungry and impatient, while nothing in the house needed to be hidden.
