Chương 7
“I didn’t know how else to get you here,” she said.
“You could have said you stole my inheritance.”
Ellen flinched.
Claire regretted the word only because it had landed accurately.
Her mother folded the top of the grocery bag inward. “Your father said it was a loan.”
“Did I agree to lend it?”
“No.”
“Then what did you think would happen?”
“We thought the company would recover.”
“That is not what I asked.”
Ellen looked at her. “I thought you would forgive us.”
The garage seemed to go silent, though traffic continued on Riverside Drive below.
Claire had expected excuses, denial, perhaps another appeal to the workers. She had not expected the answer to be so small.
“You thought I would forgive you before I knew.”
“I thought when we paid it back, you would understand.”
“You did not pay it back.”
“We were going to after the sale.”
“You did not know there was a sale.”
Ellen touched the paper bag again. “Your father has been looking for buyers.”
“None at this price.”
“No.”
“So the waiver was not about repayment. It was about making sure I could not demand it.”
“Richard believed the estate issue would frighten a buyer.”
“He was right.”
Tears reached Ellen’s lower lashes. She blinked them away.
“There are things you do in a marriage because the alternative becomes too large,” she said.
Claire leaned against the car. “That sentence can excuse anything.”
“I know.”
“No, Mom. You use it because you don’t want to name the thing.”
“What thing?”
“That you chose him.”
Ellen looked genuinely confused. “He is my husband.”
“And I am your daughter.”
“I did not choose him instead of you.”
“You signed.”
“He said if I refused, the bank would close the line and people would lose their jobs.”
“So you chose the company.”
“I chose all of us.”
“No. You chose the person in the room. You assumed the person far away would absorb it.”
Ellen wiped beneath one eye with the side of her finger. “You were always the one who could.”
Claire looked away.
A man in scrubs passed carrying a bicycle helmet. He nodded politely to both women and continued toward the elevator.
Claire had spent years treating competence as protection. She fixed travel plans, found specialists, sent money, remembered birthdays, researched assisted-living options for relatives no one else wanted to discuss. Her family called her when they needed decisions and accused her of being cold when she made them.
She picked up the grocery bag and handed it back.
“I can’t eat this.”
“It’s only sandwiches.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Ellen held the bag against her chest again.
“Will the sale happen?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you help it happen?”
“I am not allowed to.”
“But can you?”
Claire opened the car door. “You need your own lawyer.”
“I don’t want a lawyer.”
“You are a trustee who signed transfers.”
Ellen’s face went pale.
“There,” Claire said. “That is the first honest reaction I have seen.”
She got into the car and closed the door.
Ellen remained beside the hood. Through the windshield, Claire watched her mother stand alone with the bag, the raincoat buttoned wrong by one hole.
Claire started the engine.
She drove to the factory after telling herself three times that she would only pass it.
Mercer Architectural Woodworks occupied six acres near an industrial stretch south of downtown, where freight tracks cut behind warehouses and the air smelled of wet asphalt, sawdust, and the river. The brick office building had been painted cream since Claire’s childhood. The manufacturing floor stretched behind it under a corrugated roof patched in three shades of gray.
At the gate, she slowed.
A handwritten sign on the guard window read VISITORS MUST HAVE SAFETY GLASSES.
The guard was Leon Carter, who had worked nights when Claire was in high school. His beard had gone white.
He leaned out. “Well, look who remembered Tennessee.”
Claire smiled despite herself. “Hi, Leon.”
“You here to buy us or fire us?”
Her hands tightened on the steering wheel.
He grinned, then saw her face. “That was a joke.”
“Who told you?”
“Told me what?”
“That I was buying the company.”
“No one. Folks saw you walk through with suits last month. Your daddy said consultants. Everybody knows consultants mean somebody is getting bought or measured for a coffin.”
“I’m not here officially.”
“Then officially, I didn’t see you.”
He lifted the gate.
Claire should have turned around. Rebecca’s warning remained clear: do not enter the facility.
She drove into the lot anyway.
The lobby receptionist, Linda Price, came from behind the desk and hugged her. Linda smelled of rose lotion and copier paper. She had been twenty-seven when Claire first remembered her. Now her hair was silver at the roots, and reading glasses hung from a beaded cord.
“You look tired,” Linda said.
“I am.”
“Your father is upstairs.”
“I’m not here to see him.”
“That may be hard to explain in his building.”
People appeared at doorways as word traveled. A project manager waved. Someone from accounting called her “Little Claire,” then apologized because she was no longer little. The familiarity embarrassed her. She had been absent for years and was still stored in the place like an old tool no one had thrown away.
On the manufacturing floor, machines cut and shaped oak panels under bright lights. The dust collection system roared overhead. Workers in ear protection moved carts between stations. Claire put on safety glasses from a wall dispenser.
Teddy Morales was supervising installation of a new edge bander. He recognized her and wiped his hand on his work pants before shaking hers.
“Your dad says we got a big hotel job coming,” he said.
“Do you?”
“He says.”
Claire looked at the machine. “Is this leased?”
“Everything’s leased if you ask accounting.”
He smiled, then adjusted the alignment guide. “You staying in town?”
May you like
“A few days.”
“Tell your mom Carla says thank you for the soup.”
