Chương 6
“You never asked me.”
“You told everyone the house was yours.”
“It should have been.”
“That’s different.”
“Not to me.”
Daniel felt anger move through him, slow and heavy.
“You forged his name.”
Margaret looked at the bacon package instead of him.
“Did you?”
She folded the plastic grocery bag into a neat rectangle.
His mother had always done that.
Daniel suddenly wanted to tear it out of her hands.
“Did you put Dad’s signature on that deed?”
Margaret placed the folded bag in a drawer.
“Your father intended to change it.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“You learned that from Emily.”
“Mom.”
“He regretted what he did.”
“Did he sign the deed?”
Margaret looked toward the windows.
“No.”
The room became very quiet.
Daniel heard the refrigerator compressor start.
His mother adjusted the cuff of her floral blouse.
“No,” she repeated.
Daniel sat down because his knees had gone weak.
He had known.
He had evidence.
He had watched her panic when the detectives arrived.
Still, knowing and hearing were not the same thing.
“Who signed it?”
Margaret’s eyes filled, but no tears fell.
She looked annoyed by the possibility of them.
“I did.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You signed Dad’s name.”
“Yes.”
“Six hours after he died.”
“Yes.”
The word barely came out.
Daniel got up again.
He walked to the sink.
Then back.
His body wanted an action and could not find one.
“Why would you put that time on it?”
“The form generated it.”
“What form?”
Margaret closed her eyes.
“Daniel.”
“What form?”
“I filled out the document online.”
“After he died.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
He laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
“So you committed property fraud because you couldn’t sleep?”
“Don’t be cruel.”
“Cruel?”
“I sat beside your father while he died.”
“So did Claire.”
“Not at the end.”
Daniel flinched.
Margaret saw it.
He watched her regret using the weapon and refuse to put it down.
“You weren’t there,” she said more quietly.
“I know.”
“He asked for you.”
Daniel looked at the floor.
“Don’t.”
“You want truth now.”
“Not that.”
“You want to dig through every hour of that night until you can prove what I did, but you don’t want to discuss where you were.”
“I was working.”
“You were angry with him.”
“I was working because he told me not to come.”
“He called you twice.”
“I saw the calls afterward.”
“You ignored him.”
“My phone was in the trailer.”
“You always have an explanation.”
Daniel turned.
“Did Dad ask you to sign his name?”
Margaret opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
“Did he?”
“No.”
There it was.
The central fact.
No shouting.
No police.
No music.
Just his mother in a kitchen where she had cooked thousands of meals, admitting that after the man she had loved and fought with for nearly four decades stopped breathing, she sat awake and put his name on a legal document.
Daniel leaned against the counter.
“Why one point two million?”
Margaret pressed her fingers to her lips.
He waited.
She sat down across from him.
“The townhouse is mortgaged.”
Daniel frowned.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes.”
“Dad paid it off.”
“I borrowed against it.”
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred thousand.”
Daniel said nothing.
Margaret looked at the lake.
“I made an investment.”
He almost did not ask.
“What investment?”
“A development.”
“What kind?”
“A retirement community.”
Daniel shut his eyes.
“Who?”
“People I knew.”
“Names.”
“You don’t know them.”
“Try me.”
She told him.
Daniel knew one.
Not well.
A former subcontractor named Wade Larkin who had left Charles’s company after a dispute over invoices.
Daniel took out his phone.
Margaret’s expression hardened.
“Don’t.”
“I’m looking him up.”
“Don’t treat me like an idiot.”
He stopped.
“Did Wade Larkin get your money?”
“He was involved.”
“Did you give him four hundred thousand dollars?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what it was like.”
She rubbed her hands together.
For the first time, Daniel noticed her wedding ring was missing.
“Mom.”
She tucked her left hand beneath her right.
“Where’s your ring?”
“I sold it.”
He stared at her.
“For how much?”
“Twenty-three thousand.”
“When?”
“December.”
Daniel pulled out a chair and sat again.
The anger inside him had nowhere to go now.
It had collided with something else.
Fear, maybe.
Or the humiliating recognition that while he had spent three years insisting his mother was manipulative, she had been quietly falling apart in ways he had never bothered to investigate.
“How much do you owe?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“You know exactly.”
Margaret looked away.
“Eight hundred and sixty.”
“Thousand?”
“Yes.”
Daniel stood.
The chair legs scraped the floor.
Margaret flinched.
He walked out of the kitchen.
He went to the front hall, then the living room, then stopped because there was nowhere in the house far enough away from her.
Margaret followed.
“The loan against this property would have cleared everything.”
“By stealing my house.”
“It was your father’s house.”
“It was legally mine.”
“You say legally as though that ends the conversation.”
“It ends the part where you borrow one point two million dollars against it.”
“You could afford the loss.”
Daniel turned so quickly she stopped.
“You have no idea what I can afford.”
“You make more money than any of us.”
“I guaranteed Dad’s debt.”
“And you survived.”
“I almost lost my company.”
“You work for a company.”
“Because mine failed.”
Margaret’s expression changed.
Daniel laughed without humor.
“You didn’t know.”
“You never told me.”
“You weren’t speaking to me.”
“That was your choice too.”
“Sure.”
He went to the windows.
The lake looked brighter now.
A fisherman’s boat moved slowly beyond the dock, ordinary and indifferent.
“My business shut down eleven months after Dad’s stroke,” Daniel said. “I sold my condo to cover payroll. I still owe two hundred and ten thousand on the guarantee.”
Margaret stared at him.
“You never said.”
“You never asked.”
May you like
That was unfair.
He knew it the moment he said it.
