Chương 4
“Stay where you are. I’m coming.”
“You’re at work.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Anna.”
“Please.”
The word came out thin and young. Margaret saw her at eight years old, sitting on the kitchen counter with a cut knee while Richard searched three cabinets for a bandage that had always been in the drawer beside the sink.
Margaret stepped back from the bus.
The driver closed the doors with an irritated sigh and pulled away.
“I’m at LaSalle and Monroe,” she said.
Anna arrived thirty-two minutes later in a small blue hatchback with salt crusted along its doors. She pulled illegally into a loading zone, got out without turning off the engine, and wrapped both arms around Margaret.
Margaret disliked being hugged in public. She stood stiffly for a second, then held her daughter.
Anna drew back. At thirty-four, she had Richard’s dark eyebrows and Margaret’s habit of pressing her lips together when frightened.
“Where is it?”
“In my handbag.”
“The money?”
“The envelope.”
Anna stared at her.
Margaret opened the passenger door. “Move before somebody gives you a ticket.”
They drove to Margaret’s condo on the Northwest Side. Anna asked questions at every red light. Margaret answered only the ones she could.
No, she had not seen the entire account.
Yes, Richard was dead.
Yes, the bank wanted a release.
No, she had not opened the envelope.
“Why not?”
“I was busy finding out how many people had lied to me.”
“That seems like a reason to open it.”
“It seemed like a reason not to let them watch.”
Anna turned the heater higher. One vent made a faint whistling sound.
“Did Dad know he was sick?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was the money there before he got sick?”
“Most of it.”
Anna gripped the steering wheel. “So he could have told us.”
“Yes.”
“He knew you were selling your furniture.”
“I did not sell all my furniture.”
“You sold the dining table.”
“It was too large.”
“You loved that table.”
“It was too large and I loved it.”
Anna blinked quickly and looked toward the road.
Margaret watched storefronts pass: a laundromat, a bakery with fogged windows, a vacant pharmacy still bearing the pale outline of removed letters. The city looked exactly as it had that morning. People hurried beneath knit caps. A delivery cyclist balanced two paper bags against his chest. A woman dragged a reluctant terrier away from a patch of dirty snow.
Six million dollars had not changed the color of anything.
At the condo, Margaret set the envelope on her kitchen table.
The table was not the one she had sold. This one came from a resale shop and wobbled unless a folded grocery circular was tucked beneath one leg. Anna removed her coat, then immediately put it back on.
“Your heat is low.”
“It is sixty-six.”
“It feels like fifty.”
“You run warm.”
Anna looked at the thermostat. “It says sixty-one.”
“The thermostat is dramatic.”
“Mom.”
“The furnace man is coming Thursday.”
“You said that last Thursday.”
“He canceled.”
“Because you canceled when he told you the service fee.”
Margaret put the kettle on.
Anna stared at the envelope as though it might move.
“Open it.”
“I’m making tea.”
“Open it while the water boils.”
“I don’t like doing two things badly.”
“Since when?”
Margaret looked over her shoulder.
Anna’s expression shifted. “Sorry.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“No. But I shouldn’t have said it.”
The kettle began to hum. Margaret took down two mugs. One had a faded picture of the Chicago skyline. The other said WORLD’S OKAYEST DAUGHTER, a gift Anna had bought for herself at an airport.
“Tea first,” Margaret said.
They sat across from each other. Margaret placed a butter knife beside the envelope.
Anna reached toward it, then withdrew her hand.
“Do you want me to?”
“No.”
Margaret slid the blade beneath the flap. The adhesive gave with a soft tear that made her chest tighten.
Inside were eight folded pages, a photograph, and a smaller sealed envelope marked FOR ANNA, IF MARGARET CHOOSES.
Anna read the words upside down.
“What does that mean?”
“It means he found a way to control the room after he died.”
Margaret placed Anna’s envelope aside.
The photograph showed Richard standing outside Williams Lake Printing in 1994, one arm around Margaret’s father. Both men were younger than Margaret had remembered them. Her father wore the green work jacket he refused to replace even after the zipper broke. Richard held a paper cup and smiled at someone beyond the frame.
On the back, he had written: This is where I began taking what I had not earned.
Anna leaned closer. “Was that his handwriting too?”
“Yes.”
Margaret unfolded the letter.
Margaret,
If the bank has given you this, then I am dead, you have asked for the full distribution, and I have lost the right to decide when you know the truth. I should have lost that right years ago.
The money began with yours.
There were no penalties large enough to erase your father’s sale proceeds. There was no final creditor settlement that consumed them. I moved the money through two corporate accounts and used it to support a line of credit for Ellison-Wade. You signed one document that allowed me to do more than you understood. I allowed you to believe the loss was the consequence of that signature. It was not. It was the consequence of my choices.
Margaret stopped.
Anna’s hand moved toward hers but settled on the table between them.
“Keep reading,” she said.
“I am.”
“You stopped.”
“I know what I did.”
May you like
Margaret looked down again.
At first I told myself I was borrowing it. The company had ninety-three employees and a contract that would have saved us if we could survive six months. I believed I was protecting our future. When the contract came through, I could have restored the money. I did not. By then, admitting what I had done would have changed how you saw me, and I valued your mistaken opinion of me more than I valued your right to the truth.
