Chương 6
She had told him he was going to beat the cancer.
He had smiled.
She had thought the smile meant gratitude.
Now she could not remember what he had tried to say after that.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Corinne’s expression sharpened.
“I did.”
“When?”
“Three times.”
“You told me I was hovering.”
“You were.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No. You’re right. I should have said, ‘Your son is pretending not to be terrified because he thinks your grief will kill you before the cancer kills him.’”
Eulalia flinched.
Corinne immediately looked away.
“That was cruel.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t apologize if you mean it.”
“I can mean something and regret how I said it.”
Eulalia hated that sentence because it sounded like something Neftalí might have learned too late.
She gathered the documents.
“I’m filing a challenge.”
Corinne went very still.
“You decided.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Because of what I said?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I almost protected him again.”
Corinne looked at the deed.
Eulalia placed Neftalí’s letter beside it.
“He told me not to. Maybe that was the last honest thing he gave me.”
For the next nine days they lived in the same house like reluctant witnesses under protective custody.
Corinne moved into the guest room.
Eulalia stayed in the bedroom that had once belonged to Neftalí.
Neither woman mentioned why they did not reverse those arrangements.
The listing was suspended.
The house did not sell.
Calls came from the real-estate agent, the estate attorney, lenders, business partners, and people whose names Eulalia had never heard despite years of believing she knew how her son earned and spent money.
Corinne handled most of them in the home office.
Eulalia heard her voice through the door, low and even, never quoting details afterward unless Eulalia asked.
At first Eulalia interpreted the secrecy as manipulation.
Then she began receiving copies of documents.
Loan statements.
Tax records.
Restaurant operating agreements.
Medical bills.
A life-insurance statement far smaller than Eulalia had assumed.
There was no secret fortune.
No hidden account.
No satisfying discovery that made the arithmetic kind.
Neftalí had been drowning before he got sick.
Cancer had merely removed his ability to keep swimming.
The family home had become the last object with enough value to postpone the consequences.
One morning Eulalia found Corinne asleep at the kitchen table with a calculator beside her hand.
She considered waking her.
Instead she turned off the overhead light and made coffee quietly.
Corinne woke ten minutes later.
For a moment she looked around as though she did not know where she was.
Then she saw Eulalia.
“Did you drug me?”
“You’re not charming enough to drug.”
Corinne rubbed her face.
“What time is it?”
“Six forty.”
“I have a call at seven.”
“Your phone has been vibrating.”
Corinne grabbed it.
She disappeared into the office.
Eulalia stood alone in the kitchen.
It occurred to her that she had just protected Corinne’s sleep.
The realization annoyed her enough that she burned the toast.
On the tenth day, Eulalia returned to the mountain cabin.
She did not tell Corinne until she had already ordered the rideshare.
Corinne appeared in the front hall while Eulalia was putting on shoes.
“You’re not driving?”
“My car is still at the cabin.”
“I can take you.”
“No.”
“Your face is barely healed.”
“My face does not operate the steering wheel.”
“You hit your head.”
“The doctor cleared me.”
“For driving in the mountains?”
“For being alive.”
Corinne crossed her arms.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t be there alone.”
Eulalia looked up.
“Now you care?”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer disturbed her.
She tied her shoes.
“You can follow if you want. I’m not riding with you.”
Corinne did.
For nearly two hours, Eulalia watched the black SUV remain three or four cars behind on the interstate and then closer on the mountain roads.
Petty satisfaction warmed her whenever another vehicle got between them.
The cabin stood in a narrow valley beneath ridges still patched with late snow.
It had belonged to Eulalia’s husband’s older brother originally. After he died, the family bought it from his estate. Neftalí had spent summers there as a teenager, complaining about mosquitoes and claiming to hate every minute until the day they sold his dirt bike and he behaved as though childhood itself had been confiscated.
The front porch sagged slightly.
A strip of yellow caution tape crossed the kitchen entrance.
Corinne had arranged that.
Eulalia did not thank her.
A contractor had covered the broken section of floor with plywood.
The rotten boards removed after Eulalia’s fall were stacked beside the porch.
One of them had a dark smear that might have been her blood.
She stared at it too long.
Corinne stood several feet behind her.
“You fell through there?”
“My leg went through first. Then the board broke under my other foot.”
“How did you hit your face?”
“The edge of the counter.”
Corinne’s mouth tightened.
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t break the floor.”
“I sent you here.”
“Yes.”
They went inside.
The cabin smelled of dust, old pine, and damp stone.
Without electricity, the rooms had the sealed chill of a place not expecting people.
Eulalia walked to the corner beside the old cast-iron stove.
The floorboard she had pried loose was still up.
The cavity beneath it was empty now.
She pointed.
“There.”
Corinne crouched.
“He hid it well.”
“He knew which board was loose.”
“He fixed that stove three summers ago.”
“I remember.”
Corinne touched the edge of the opening.
“Why here?”
“Because he knew you’d send me here.”
Corinne shook her head.
“But that doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“No. Think about it.”
Eulalia’s irritation rose.
“I have done little else.”
“If he believed I would sell the house and send you to the cabin, he needed you to find the letter. But how could he know you would look under this board?”
May you like
“He wrote where to look.”
“On the letter inside the box.”
