Chapter 6: The Woman Who Left Without Coming Inside
Her name was Vera.
I remembered her hands more than her face.
Long fingers, rings on most of them, nails that were always the same shade of dark red.
She had looked at me at the funeral the way you look at something you're not sure belongs to you — assessing, not warm.
When she came to our door that second time, I had been doing homework at the kitchen table.
I heard the knock.
I heard Mom answer it.
I heard a voice I didn't recognize say, "I'd like to see Kira."
I came to the hallway.
Vera was standing on the porch in a good coat.
She looked at me, then past me at Dan, who had come out of the back room.
Something shifted in her face.
"I see," she said.
Then she left.
Mom never explained it.
I never asked.
I was ten and I didn't have the language for what I'd seen, only the feeling — that I had failed some kind of inspection I hadn't known I was taking.
Now I was sixteen, sitting at the kitchen table, looking at her name on a legal pad.
"Why would she do it?" I asked.
"I don't know yet," Mom said.
"But think about it.
She's Robert's mother.
She would have known if Robert set up a trust.
She may have helped him set it up.
And she came here seven years ago — right around the time the disbursement address was changed."
"She saw Dan."
"Yes."
"And left."
"Yes."
I thought about that for a moment.
"She didn't want the money going to a family with Dan in it."
Mom didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
"So she forged a letter," I said.
"Redirected the money.
And Robert spent seven years thinking it was reaching us."
"That's what I think happened.
But thinking isn't enough."
"What do we do?"
"We meet Robert," Mom said.
"Before we do anything else, we meet him and we find out what he knows.
Because if he's been in contact with Vera — if he knew what she did and said nothing — that changes everything."
Dan appeared in the kitchen doorway.
He'd been in the other room.
He hadn't said he was listening, but his face told me he had heard enough.
"When does he get here?" Dan asked.
"Three weeks," I said.
Dan nodded slowly.
He looked at Mom.
"Do you want me there?"
Mom looked at him for a long moment.
"Yes," she said.
"I do."
He nodded again and went back to the other room.
I looked at Mom.
"Isn't that going to be strange?
Dan being there when I meet my father?"
"Probably," she said.
"Does that bother you?"
She picked up her pen and capped it.
"What bothers me," she said, "is that a woman sat in a lawyer's office and decided your future wasn't worth protecting.
Everything else I can manage."
She stood up and took her legal pad with her.
I sat at the table alone for a minute.
Then I got up and went to the window.
The shed was visible from there, its door still slightly open from the morning.
The blue car was inside, waiting.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*Kira.
This is Robert.
I hope it's okay that I have your number.
I got it from Vera.
I just wanted to say I'm looking forward to meeting you.
— Dad.*
May you like
I stared at the word at the end of the message for a long time.
Then I set the phone face-down on the counter and went to find Mom.
