Chapter 7: Route 9
My mother left without another word.
She walked through June's front door, down the porch steps, and got into her car.
She didn't slam the door.
She closed it carefully, the way she did everything — with control, with the appearance of composure, with the practiced ease of a woman who had been managing her exits for thirty years.
June stopped the recording and set her phone on the table.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I should have done something like that a long time ago."
I looked at the phone.
"Does she know you recorded it?"
"She saw the screen."
"Then she knows."
"Yes." June sat down slowly.
"She'll be thinking about that all the way to the church.
She'll be deciding what it means and what she can do about it.
That will keep her occupied for a little while."
I picked up the letter from the table and folded it carefully along its original creases.
"Can I take this?"
"It's yours," June said.
"It always should have been."
I put it in my bag next to the notebook.
Then I looked at my daughter in the living room, still arranging the ceramic birds on the shelf in an order that apparently made sense to her.
"Lily," I said.
"We're going to make one more stop before church."
She looked up.
"Does this place have cookies too?"
"Probably not."
She considered this.
"Okay."
---
The Comfort Inn on Route 9 was a two-story building with an outdoor corridor and a vending machine that hummed loudly near the stairwell.
I had called Danny from the car.
He met me in the parking lot, still in his church clothes, his tie done up properly this time.
"Mom called me," he said.
"She said you were going to do something that would hurt a lot of people."
"She's right," I said.
"Some of them deserve it."
He looked at Lily, who was holding my hand and examining the vending machine with great interest.
"Room 114," he said quietly.
"She's expecting to leave for the church at ten."
It was nine-twenty.
I knocked on the door of room 114.
The woman who opened it was about my age.
Medium height, dark hair pulled back, wearing a blouse she had clearly ironed that morning.
She had my father's eyes.
I had not expected that.
I had prepared myself for a lot of things on the drive over, but not for that — for standing in a motel doorway and seeing my father's eyes looking back at me from a stranger's face.
She looked at me.
Then at Danny behind me.
"You're Victoria," she said.
"Tori," I said.
"Can I come in?"
She stepped back.
The room was neat.
Her church clothes were laid out on the second bed.
A small gift bag sat on the desk — something she had brought, I realized, for my mother.
A thank-you gift.
I sat in the chair by the window.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
Lily climbed up beside her without invitation and looked at the gift bag.
"Lily," I said.
"It's okay," Patricia said.
She looked at Lily for a moment with an expression I recognized — the careful, slightly stunned look of someone encountering a family resemblance they hadn't been warned about.
"She looks like—"
"Dad," I said.
"I know."
Patricia folded her hands in her lap.
"Why are you here?"
"Because there are things you don't know," I said.
"And you're about to walk into a church service not knowing them, and I don't think that's fair."
She was quiet.
"The money you've been receiving," I said.
"The family fund.
Do you know where it came from?"
"Your mother said it was a family—"
"It came from me," I said.
"From my nursing salary.
My mother told me it was for the house.
For emergencies.
I sent it every month for six years and I had no idea any of it was going to you."
Patricia's face changed.
"She also kept a portion," I said.
"Every month.
A little at a time.
Over six years it added up to about eleven thousand dollars."
Patricia looked at Danny.
Danny looked at the floor.
"There's also a letter," I said.
I took it from my bag and held it out.
She didn't take it immediately.
She looked at it the way you look at something you already know is going to change things.
Then she took it.
I watched her read.
I watched her get to the second paragraph.
I watched her hand tighten on the page.
She read to the end.
Then she set it on the bed beside her and looked out the window at the parking lot.
"She told me she was the only one in your family who ever wanted to acknowledge me," Patricia said.
Her voice was very even.
"She said your father was ashamed.
She said the rest of the family would never accept me.
She said she was the only one fighting for me to have anything at all."
"She was the one keeping you away from my father," I said.
"She was paying you to stay away.
And threatening to expose something about your mother if you didn't."
Patricia picked up the letter again.
Read one line near the bottom.
"My mother asked your father for money when she found out she was pregnant," she said quietly.
"A lump sum.
To start over somewhere else.
He paid it.
Your mother found out and used it against her for the rest of her life." She set the letter down.
"I always wondered why my mother never wanted to talk about your family.
She'd say it was complicated.
That some things were better left alone."
The vending machine hummed in the corridor outside.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I don't know what you expected today to be.
But I didn't want you to walk in there without knowing."
Patricia looked at me for a long moment.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to go to the service," I said.
"And I'm going to tell the truth."
She was quiet for a while.
Lily had lost interest in the gift bag and was now lying on her back on the bed, looking at the ceiling.
"I'll come," Patricia said finally.
"If that's all right."
"It's your family too," I said.
She looked at me when I said that.
May you like
Like she was checking whether I meant it.
I did.
