Chương 8
Rachel had planned soup.
They got fries.
Sophie ate six before saying, “Dr. Vega said I can be mad at Aunt Vanessa and miss her.”
Rachel put ketchup on her own fries.
“She’s right.”
“That’s weird.”
“It is.”
“Are you mad and miss her?”
“No.”
Sophie accepted that too.
Rachel regretted the answer a little.
Not because it was false.
Because it was simpler than the truth.
She did not miss Vanessa.
She missed the version of family in which she had not needed to know this about her.
Two days later, Vanessa came to the house.
Rachel was on a video call for work when the doorbell rang.
Helen was folding towels in the family room.
Sophie was at school. Ethan was upstairs with a fever and a bowl of dry cereal.
The doorbell rang again.
Helen froze.
Rachel saw Vanessa on the security camera.
She muted her meeting.
“She can’t come in.”
Helen nodded.
Vanessa rang again.
Then knocked.
Then called Helen’s phone.
Helen looked at the screen.
Rachel returned to her meeting.
Her colleague was talking about quarterly projections.
Rachel unmuted herself and answered a question about provider contracts while her sister-in-law stood six feet away on the other side of the front door.
The normality of it felt almost obscene.
After twelve minutes, Vanessa left.
Helen sat down on the stairs.
Rachel finished her call.
“She looked awful,” Helen said.
Rachel closed her laptop.
“Okay.”
“I’m not asking you to change your mind.”
“Good.”
“I’m saying she looked awful.”
Rachel studied her mother-in-law.
“Do you want to go see her?”
Helen’s head came up.
“You’d be angry.”
“I might be.”
“That’s not permission.”
“You don’t need my permission.”
Helen looked toward the front door.
For years, Rachel had assumed Helen’s passivity came from weakness.
Now she began to see something more complicated.
Helen did not merely avoid conflict.
She outsourced decisions.
If Rachel forbade her from seeing Vanessa, Helen could blame Rachel. If Vanessa demanded loyalty, Helen could blame Vanessa. If nobody explicitly told her what to do, she could remain in the doorway between choices forever.
Rachel said, “I’m not deciding this for you.”
Helen frowned.
“She’s my daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And Sophie is my granddaughter.”
“Yes.”
“I love them both.”
“I know.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
Rachel shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Helen looked almost offended.
Rachel continued, “You’re sixty-six. I’m done assigning you feelings.”
For a moment, Helen stared.
Then she laughed.
It was a strange, exhausted laugh.
Rachel laughed too.
Neither of them seemed certain why.
Ethan yelled from upstairs, “I can hear you being weird!”
Rachel called back, “Take your medicine!”
“I did!”
“When?”
Silence.
Rachel looked at Helen.
Helen said, “I’ll check.”
Normal life returned for approximately three minutes.
Then Helen came downstairs holding Ethan’s tablet.
“He wants you to see something.”
Rachel’s stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Not another video.”
Helen handed it over.
It was an email account Rachel did not recognize.
The address belonged to Ethan.
“When did he get this?”
“He says Vanessa made it for him.”
Rachel went upstairs.
Ethan was in bed under three blankets, sweating.
“You have an email account?”
He grimaced.
“I forgot.”
“How do you forget an email account?”
“I don’t use email.”
Fair.
Rachel sat at the edge of the bed.
“When did Aunt Vanessa make it?”
“Last summer.”
“Why?”
“She said you read my messages.”
Rachel stared at him.
“I do.”
“I know.”
“Because you’re ten.”
“I know.”
“She told you to hide things from me?”
He rubbed his nose.
“Kind of.”
“Ethan.”
“She said everybody needs privacy.”
Rachel looked at the tablet.
There were twenty-three emails from Vanessa over eight months.
Most were harmless.
Pictures of Daniel.
Stories about him in high school.
A photograph of Daniel at sixteen with terrible blond highlights.
A recipe for pancakes.
A link to a song he liked.
Then the tone changed.
Did your mom talk about Minnesota again?
Don’t worry Sophie with it.
Grandma thinks Rachel is rushing decisions.
Your dad would want you to speak up if something feels wrong.
You’re the man of the house now, buddy. Sometimes you’ll have to protect Sophie even from decisions adults make.
Rachel read that sentence twice.
Ethan watched her.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think she meant protect like fighting.”
“I know.”
“She said Dad would hate Minneapolis because of the Vikings.”
Rachel almost laughed.
“He would have.”
“So she wasn’t lying about everything.”
“No.”
That mattered.
Rachel put the tablet down.
“People can tell the truth about some things and still manipulate you about others.”
He frowned.
“Manipulate sounds like a robot word.”
“It means trying to make you think or do something without being honest about why.”
“Oh.”
He sneezed.
Rachel handed him a tissue.
He used the corner of his blanket.
She stared at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She took the blanket off the bed.
“Mom.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m sick.”
“You have tissues.”
He grinned faintly.
She carried the blanket to the laundry room.
On the way she passed Daniel’s framed photograph in the upstairs hall.
Vanessa had given it to the children after the funeral.
Daniel was holding Ethan on his shoulders at a county fair. Sophie, then four, was trying to reach the cotton candy in his hand.
Rachel stopped.
For months after Daniel died, Vanessa had supplied the memories.
Photos.
Videos.
Stories.
Old voicemails.
She had been generous with them.
Rachel could see now how easy it would have been for that generosity to turn, by degrees, into authority.
She knows Dad better.
She remembers what Dad wanted.
She knows what Dad would think.
Rachel had never challenged it because Vanessa did know things Rachel did not.
She knew what Daniel had been like at twelve.
Which teacher he hated.
How he broke his arm.
What songs he played in his first car.
May you like
The children deserved those memories.
But a memory could become a weapon when somebody used the dead to win arguments they could no longer make themselves.
