Chương 4
Lauren had wondered what the woman would do when adjustment was no longer possible.
Now she had her answer.
She would build another lie.
Lauren said, “I need to call her.”
“No.”
“Caroline.”
“Not while you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“That may be worse.”
Lauren almost smiled.
“I need to hear what she says.”
“No. You need to preserve communications and stop giving people opportunities to rewrite conversations later.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Eat pancakes.”
“Mia is eating pancakes.”
“Then steal one.”
“I hate pancakes.”
“Today seems like a good day to reconsider.”
Lauren looked across the table.
Mia had built a small wall from sugar packets.
“I’ll call you later.”
“Promise me.”
“I’ll call you.”
“That was not the promise.”
Lauren sighed.
“I won’t contact Margaret.”
“Thank you.”
Lauren hung up.
She lasted eleven minutes.
Then Margaret called her.
Lauren stared at the screen.
Caroline had told her not to contact Margaret.
Technically, Lauren thought, she had not.
She answered.
For several seconds neither woman spoke.
Lauren could hear traffic through Margaret’s phone.
Then Margaret said, “He knows.”
Lauren looked at Mia.
“That seems to be the theme of the morning.”
“Lauren, I am so sorry.”
“For what part?”
Margaret’s breathing changed.
“Please don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“You know what.”
“I really don’t anymore.”
Mia glanced up.
Lauren softened her voice.
“Tell me where you are.”
“Your house.”
The phrase nearly made Lauren laugh.
“My house.”
Margaret started crying again.
Lauren hated the sound because she still cared.
That was the humiliating part.
After everything, some piece of her still pictured Margaret bringing soup when Mia had pneumonia, rubbing Lauren’s back during labor, teaching her how to make Robert’s mother’s cornbread without turning it sweet.
People were inconveniently whole.
Nobody stayed inside the role you assigned them.
Villain.
Mother-in-law.
Liar.
Grandmother.
Friend.
Margaret had been all of those things.
“What did you tell Ethan?” Lauren asked.
“The truth.”
Lauren waited.
Margaret added, “Most of it.”
“There we are.”
“He was out of control.”
“So you changed the truth to make him feel better.”
“I was trying to calm him down.”
“Seven years later, same method.”
“That’s unfair.”
Lauren closed her eyes.
“Is it?”
“You agreed.”
“Yes.”
That stopped Margaret.
Lauren continued.
“I agreed. I let you tell him you bought the house. I let him believe it because you convinced me finding out his family was broke would destroy him. Then I kept letting it happen because every year the truth got uglier.”
“I never forced you.”
“No.”
Lauren looked at Mia’s sugar wall.
“No, you didn’t.”
That admission cost something.
Margaret’s voice softened.
“We were desperate.”
“I know.”
“We had nowhere.”
“I know.”
“Robert couldn’t sleep. He thought he’d failed everybody.”
“I know, Margaret.”
“And Ethan—”
“No.”
“What?”
“You don’t get to make this about protecting Ethan anymore.”
Silence.
Lauren said, “What did you tell him this morning?”
Margaret whispered, “That you bought the house.”
“And?”
“That we intended to repay you.”
Lauren almost said they had paid some rent during the first two years, though irregularly. It seemed irrelevant.
“And?”
Margaret did not answer.
“Margaret.”
“He asked why it was only in your name.”
Lauren’s fingers tightened around the phone.
“What did you say?”
“I said you wanted it that way.”
“That’s true.”
“Lauren—”
“Why did I want it that way?”
Margaret began speaking too quickly.
“Because it was your inheritance and Robert’s finances were a mess and the attorney said—”
“What did you tell Ethan?”
Another silence.
“I said you didn’t trust him.”
Lauren looked toward the restaurant ceiling.
There were tiny plastic flags hanging above the kitchen pass.
She counted six.
“You told him I bought a house for all of us and hid the deed because I didn’t trust him.”
“I panicked.”
“That is not panic. That is a sentence.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“So you made me the villain.”
“He was screaming.”
“And I wasn’t there.”
Margaret made a small sound.
Lauren’s anger finally arrived.
Not hot.
Not cinematic.
It felt like a door quietly locking.
“You have been using me as a shock absorber for your son since I was twenty-six.”
“That is not fair.”
“You said that already.”
“I loved you like a daughter.”
“Then why was I always the expendable daughter?”
Margaret stopped breathing for a moment.
Lauren regretted the sentence.
Not enough to take it back.
Mia pushed the sugar packets down with one finger.
“Mommy, earthquake.”
Lauren smiled automatically.
“Big one.”
Margaret heard Mia.
Her voice broke.
“Is she okay?”
“She watched her father kick my belongings across a driveway.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She watched you fall to your knees.”
“I know.”
“She thinks this is about a house.”
Margaret whispered, “Maybe that’s better.”
Lauren looked at the phone.
“No. That right there is the problem.”
“What?”
“You still think not knowing is safer.”
Lauren hung up.
Mia looked at her.
“Grandma?”
“Yes.”
“Is she sick?”
“No.”
“Then why did she fall?”
“She got scared.”
“Of Daddy?”
Lauren’s first instinct was again to protect.
Again she forced herself not to lie.
“A little.”
Mia looked at her giraffe.
“I get scared of Daddy when he’s loud.”
Lauren’s body went cold.
She did not react.
She had learned in parenting classes that children sometimes dropped important truths into ordinary conversation because they had no category for importance.
She kept her voice steady.
“When is Daddy loud with you?”
Mia shrugged.
“When he’s mad.”
“At you?”
“Sometimes.”
“What happens?”
Another shrug.
“He talks big.”
“Does he hurt you?”
Mia’s eyes widened.
“No.”
“Has he ever grabbed you hard?”
“No.”
“Pushed you?”
“No.”
“Thrown things?”
Mia thought.
“He threw the remote.”
Lauren remembered.
Three months earlier.
Ethan had thrown it at the sofa after a basketball game, then laughed when it bounced onto the floor.
Mia had been in the room.
Lauren had argued with him later.
He had called her dramatic.
“What do you do when Daddy gets loud?”
“I go to my room.”
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“Why?”
“So he gets not loud.”
