Chương 5
He nodded.
“Okay.”
Then he went back into the den.
The adults listened to the truck start again.
Helen sat heavily at the table.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“You’re not,” Robert said.
“I might.”
“You always announce it and then you’re never sick.”
Helen looked at him.
“Thank you, Robert. Very comforting.”
Emma laughed.
It came out wrong.
Too high.
Helen laughed too.
Then both women stopped.
Robert sat down.
For a minute, nobody said anything.
Emma looked through the glass door.
Lauren stood alone on the back patio with both arms wrapped around herself.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the trust?” Emma asked.
Robert stared at his hands.
“You had enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
Helen rubbed her temple.
“Oh, not again.”
Emma looked at her.
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“A few months.”
Emma pushed her chair back.
“Great.”
“Emma.”
“No. She does not get to smash a picture and tell my kid he isn’t family, but the rest of you don’t get to make a legal plan around my son without telling me.”
“It wasn’t around him,” Robert said. “It was for him.”
“That distinction sounds better to you than it does to me.”
Robert frowned.
“Would you have objected?”
“I might have.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s seven. Because I’m his mother. Because giving him the house while excluding Chloe was obviously going to create a problem.”
“It doesn’t exclude Chloe from everything.”
“What does she get?”
Robert paused.
Emma stared at him.
“What does Chloe get?”
“Other assets.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“Dad.”
Helen said, “We haven’t finalized everything.”
Emma stood.
“So Lauren is right about one thing.”
Robert’s jaw tightened.
“Be very specific.”
“You handled this badly.”
“That does not excuse what she did.”
“I said one thing.”
Helen reached for Emma’s hand.
Emma moved before her mother touched it.
“I need air.”
She stepped onto the patio.
Lauren did not look at her.
The August evening was heavy and bright, the suburban lawns still green from two weeks of rain. Somewhere beyond the fence, children were playing basketball. A ball hit pavement in a slow, irregular rhythm.
Emma stood several feet away.
“You owe him an apology.”
Lauren stared at the yard.
“I know.”
“Tonight.”
“No.”
Emma’s temper returned instantly.
“No?”
“I’m not going back in there while he’s still asking questions.”
“You caused the questions.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying you know.”
Lauren turned.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth would be new.”
Lauren’s face hardened.
“You want the truth? Fine. I found out Dad put the house in a trust for Noah, and I lost my mind.”
“That’s not all of it.”
“No.”
“What else?”
Lauren looked toward the kitchen window.
“You.”
Emma almost smiled.
“There she is.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
“For our whole lives, there has always been a reason you needed more.”
Emma crossed her arms.
“And you needed less because you wanted less.”
“I learned not to ask.”
“You learned to keep score.”
Lauren looked wounded.
“Because somebody had to.”
Emma stared at her.
“When did this start?”
“You really don’t know?”
“No.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“Then tell me.”
Lauren looked toward the fence.
“When I was seventeen, I got into Northwestern.”
Emma blinked.
“I remember.”
“No, you remember that I didn’t go.”
“You got the scholarship to State.”
“I got partial scholarship money at Northwestern too.”
Emma frowned.
“I didn’t know that.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
Lauren laughed quietly.
“Dad had just been laid off. Mom was picking up extra hours at the clinic. You were fourteen and having those panic attacks you kept pretending were asthma. Nobody said, ‘Lauren, you can’t go.’ Nobody had to.”
Emma’s arms lowered.
Lauren continued.
“I sat at this patio table with Dad and listened to him explain the numbers. He said they would figure it out. He said they could borrow. I told him I liked State better.”
Emma remembered Lauren’s old bedroom with the purple comforter. A Northwestern brochure had remained taped beside her desk for months after she accepted the other offer.
Emma had assumed it was decoration.
“I didn’t know.”
“You keep saying that like it helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“No.”
The basketball bounced somewhere behind the fence.
Emma rubbed her palms against her jeans.
“You were seventeen.”
“Exactly.”
“You were a kid too.”
Lauren’s eyes flashed.
“And I did what this family needed.”
Emma took the hit.
Lauren went on.
“Then you were twenty-two and wrecked the car. Twenty-seven and the business failed. Thirty-one and the adoption got expensive. Thirty-two and Noah needed surgery.”
“His surgery was covered.”
“The deductible wasn’t.”
Emma looked at her.
“You remember the deductible?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not healthy.”
“No kidding.”
For the first time that night, Lauren’s laugh sounded like herself.
It vanished quickly.
“When Daniel started drinking, I told you to leave.”
“I know.”
“You told me I hated him.”
“You did hate him.”
“I hated what he was doing.”
“You also hated him.”
“Fine.”
Emma leaned against the patio railing.
The wood was warm through her shirt.
Lauren rubbed her thumb across her watch again.
“When he got arrested for the DUI, Dad paid for the attorney.”
“Daniel paid him back.”
“Eventually.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is that every emergency becomes everybody’s emergency when it happens to you.”
Emma looked through the window.
Noah was on the floor beside Robert.
They were turning the monster truck upside down.
Probably something had already broken.
“That still doesn’t explain what you said to him.”
“No.”
“So explain that.”
Lauren’s face changed.
This was where she wanted to protect herself.
Emma could see it happen.
“I saw him sitting in Dad’s chair.”
Emma frowned.
“What?”
“Before the party. He was sitting at the head of the dining table wearing that cape. Dad put the birthday crown on him and said, ‘King of the house.’”
Emma stared.
“You cannot be serious.”
May you like
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds insane.”
