Chương 7
“He probably was.”
Emily looked at her.
“You’re very generous toward dead people.”
“I’m less generous toward people who push me down stairs.”
Emily laughed.
It came out unexpectedly, almost like a cough.
Rachel laughed too.
Both stopped quickly.
Emily covered her face.
“This is horrible.”
“Yes.”
They sat there for another minute.
Then Emily said, “Mom pays part of my rent.”
Rachel nodded.
Daniel had mentioned it.
“She offered after the divorce. I said no three times. Then I said yes because saying no does not pay rent.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I think I do.”
“To me?”
“To myself, apparently.”
Emily looked embarrassed.
“She has always been generous in ways that make it difficult to disagree with her.”
Rachel thought of Margaret paying for family vacations, picking up restaurant checks before anyone saw them, replacing Daniel and Rachel’s refrigerator after it broke even though they had said they could handle it.
Generosity as affection.
Generosity as control.
Usually both.
“She threatened to stop?” Rachel asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you worried?”
“Because she doesn’t have to threaten things.”
Rachel understood.
Emily stared into the untouched tea.
“I’m looking at cheaper apartments.”
“You don’t have to do that because of me.”
“I’m not.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow.
Emily smiled slightly.
“Okay. Not only because of you.”
Daniel spent the next week trying to find Thomas Keene without saying he was trying to find Thomas Keene.
He searched old business records online. He looked through photographs his mother had digitized after Charles died. He asked Claire whether she remembered Thomas.
She did.
“He wore too much cologne,” Claire said.
Daniel was beginning to understand how memory worked in families.
Not facts.
Smells.
Shoes.
A baseball glove.
The way someone laughed.
Nobody had one complete story.
Claire remembered Thomas had been at Daniel’s fifth birthday party.
Emily remembered he had once brought a bottle of expensive whiskey to Christmas dinner.
A retired employee from Charles’s old company remembered Thomas left suddenly after an argument over money.
Margaret refused to discuss him further.
Then Daniel found an obituary.
Thomas Keene had died at forty-six after a motorcycle accident.
He had never married.
No children were listed.
Daniel sat with the obituary open on his laptop for nearly an hour.
Rachel found him there after work.
“You okay?”
“No.”
She put down her keys.
“What happened?”
He turned the screen toward her.
Rachel read it.
There was a photograph.
Thomas was smiling.
Daniel had his eyes.
Not perfectly.
Not enough for proof.
Enough to hurt.
Rachel looked at her husband.
He looked away.
“I always thought my eyes came from Mom’s side.”
Rachel sat beside him.
“Maybe they do.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not trying to fix it.”
“I know.”
He closed the laptop.
“I ordered a DNA test.”
Rachel nodded.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I thought you’d think I was letting her win.”
Rachel stared.
“Why would I think that?”
“Because she made this about blood.”
“No. She made it about secrecy.”
Daniel looked at her.
Rachel touched the brace around her wrist.
“And this.”
He looked ashamed.
She hated that too.
“Daniel.”
“I should have seen what she was like.”
“No.”
“I should have—”
“No.”
He stopped.
Rachel had spent days replaying the fall and had reached one conclusion she trusted.
Nobody got to rewrite the past into a warning simply because they now knew the ending.
Margaret had been difficult.
Controlling.
Proud.
Sometimes cruel in small, polished ways.
She had also brought soup when Rachel had the flu, sat through Daniel’s surgeries, remembered birthdays, paid for Emily’s dental work when she had no insurance, cared for Charles through eighteen months of cancer treatment without once complaining in public.
People were not evidence waiting to be interpreted.
Sometimes they were simply people until they did something you could no longer ignore.
“You didn’t know she would grab me,” Rachel said.
Daniel nodded.
“Neither did I.”
He put his hand over hers.
“I’m sorry I got angry about the police report.”
Rachel let that sit.
“I understand why.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No.”
“I was afraid.”
“I know.”
“Not that she’d get arrested.”
Rachel waited.
“I was afraid that if you were right about what happened, then I had to know something about my mother I didn’t want to know.”
Rachel squeezed his fingers.
“And if you were wrong, then I had to know something about you I didn’t want to know.”
That hurt.
Because it was honest.
Rachel released his hand.
Daniel looked down.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for thinking it.”
“I’m apologizing for letting it change how I treated you.”
Rachel stood.
Her hip still hurt when she rose too quickly.
Daniel reached toward her, then stopped.
She noticed the stop.
So did he.
Rachel took his hand herself.
“I need you to do something.”
“What?”
“Stop deciding who you have to lose.”
He looked confused.
“Your mother or me. Your dad or Thomas. Emily or your mother. Stop making pairs.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s helpful.”
She smiled despite herself.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I think you keep trying to solve this like there’s one truth that makes everything line up.”
Daniel looked toward the closed laptop.
“And there isn’t?”
“There may be one biological truth.”
“Which apparently everyone but me gets to know.”
“Yes.”
He winced.
Rachel continued.
“But that won’t tell you whether your father loved you. You already know that.”
Daniel said nothing.
“And it won’t tell you whether your mother loved you.”
His head lifted.
“That’s more complicated.”
“Exactly.”
Thanksgiving food remained in Margaret’s refrigerator for six days.
Claire eventually threw it away because Margaret would not.
She called Rachel while doing it.
“I have a whole pie here.”
“Throw it out.”
“It seems wasteful.”
“Claire.”
“Fine.”
Rachel heard the trash can lid open.
“Your casserole is still on the stairs,” Claire said.
Rachel went cold.
“What?”
“The stain.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
May you like
“I’ve tried everything.”
“Please stop cleaning my stuffing.”
