Chapter 7 - The Children Who Noticed
I didn’t tell Lily and Toby about the trust. They deserved to be children for a little longer, so I told them only that Grandma had hurt them and that nothing they had done caused it.
Lily listened without interrupting. Toby leaned against my arm and asked, “Was Grandma mad because we didn’t bring her anything?”
“No, sweetheart.” I cupped his cheek. “You don’t have to buy kindness.”
“Then why did she give Mason a tablet?” Lily asked. “He already has one.”
I searched for an answer that wouldn’t poison them against everyone they loved. “Sometimes adults make unfair choices and then invent reasons to defend them. That’s their responsibility, not yours.”
The next afternoon, Dana called. She sounded tired and embarrassed. “I’m sorry about New Year’s Eve. I should’ve said something.”
“Yes,” I said. “You should have.”
She went quiet. “Garrick told the kids you were jealous. Mason asked why his cousins left without presents. I didn’t know what to say.”
“You can start by telling him the truth. You don’t have to make your husband a monster, Dana, but you can’t teach your son that cruelty is harmless because it comes from Grandma.”
“I don’t know what’s true about the money,” she whispered.
“Neither did I, until yesterday.”
She asked to bring the children over. I said no for now. Not as punishment, but because my own children needed a few days in which nobody asked them to pretend nothing had happened.
That night, Lily placed her tissue-paper star on the windowsill. “I’m keeping this,” she said. “It’s the only thing I made at Grandma’s that she didn’t get to take away.”
I kissed her forehead. “That’s a good reason to keep it.”
After they went to bed, I checked the front porch camera. A car had parked across the street for nearly twenty minutes. The driver never got out. When the car finally moved, the camera caught a partial plate and a clear view of the driver’s face.
It was a man I had seen in the photograph from the bank records: Martin Vale, the attorney who had handled the trust after Grandpa died.
May you like
He had not called to explain himself.
He had come to watch my house.
